If you’re familiar with JRPGs, you’ll know that a common criticism that detractors tend to say is that combat is just mashing the A button over and over with no skill or strategy involved. I’d like to believe this isn’t true (I’m sure JRPG combat can be done well; just look at Pokémon), but a lot of the RPGs I’ve played tend to fall into this category, and the game I beat a few days ago probably exemplifies this criticism the most (at least out of all the games I’ve beaten):

This is a JRPG, but rather than enemy encounters being turn based, combat takes place in real time with you controlling the protagonist and the AI controlling everyone else (the enemies and your other active party members). This difference is the main thing that sets the Tales of- series apart from the rest; as you level up, you gain new skills that you can assign to Smash Bros.-esque button combinations (B, up and B, forward and B, and down and B), and exclusive to the 3DS port, you can assign an additional four skills (not necessarily the skills the player character knows) to four large “buttons” on the bottom touch screen. However, these attacks do little more than extend your combo for a bit longer since using any special attack ends your combo, and the only other method of attack you’ll have most of the time is a standard attack performed by pressing the A button a bunch in a row (which, as far as I could tell, doesn’t deal much less damage than any special attack). There are also super-special event combos that can be activated by using certain special attacks inside of an elemental field, but these fields only show up when an elemental attack is used, and almost all of your special attacks are non-elemental (and if I remember correctly, you need a corresponding elemental attack to trigger the event combo), so you’ll almost never see these unless you get lucky. Beyond this, at certain levels, your character learns skills that don’t correspond to traditional button combinations, like holding L and the control stick to move “free-form” (as opposed to being stuck on the 2D plane between you and the enemy you’re locked on to), as well as being able to jump by holding up and pushing Y (this doesn’t work while in free-form movement). Since your allies are AI controlled, the most you can do is tweak settings outside of battle, like “use spells” vs. “conserve TP” or arranging the characters on a grid to determine how far away they run from an enemy after attacking it before attacking again, but beyond this, they’ll pretty much do whatever. The weirdest part is that you can set the protagonist to this “auto-battle mode” as well, in case you’re not a fan of that whole “interactivity” part of video games. You can give specific orders to them in-battle, but it requires pausing the game and going through a bunch of sub-menus; not ideal for an RTS setup (maybe the touch screen could’ve been used to streamline this? Oh well). I’ve played Tales of Phantasia before this, and my main complaint with the concept of the battle system is that the game won’t let you switch direct control to another party member; if the protagonist dies, you either have to sit there and wait or go through the sub-menus to make an ally use a Life Bottle to revive you (assuming you have one).

Also, at the end of battles, you get a score showing how well you did (gaining points for efficiency, losing points for things like using items or taking damage). It’s a neat detail, but by the end of the game, you’ll be ignoring the Score completely, as will everyone else on Auldrant.

First, I’d like to discuss the graphics. Normally, I don’t do this since game graphics tend to do their jobs at least adequately (and because you could always look up screenshots yourself to determine if the visuals are up to your standards), but this game has some…unique issues with its performance. In towns and dungeons, the game runs just fine, but in the overworld, the game lags constantly, and it gets worse if you’re moving though a forest. Come on, a consistent frame-rate is supposed to be one of the advantages of consoles! What’s even more annoying is that pop-in is very common on the overworld; for example, if you rotate the camera and it manages to move faster than the slow crawl it normally moves at, the entire part of the map behind your character will take a couple seconds to appear, and mountains can pop in simply by walking or flying forward. I admit I’m not familiar with the PS2 version, but I think it’s safe to say that this is a pretty quick-and-dirty port.

Another problem I had is with the optional cut-scenes. Basically, after a traditional cut-scene where you advance each line of dialogue by hitting the button, some text will appear on the corner of the screen letting you know that you can watch another cut-scene by pressing the Start button. Unlike normal cut-scenes where the characters’ models move around with dialogue balloons appearing by them and text being advanced by pressing a button, these cut-scenes have the text at the bottom of the screen with the characters’ names in front to show who’s speaking, and character movement is represented by mug-shots of the characters moving around and changing expressions. These were annoying because, since the text advances by itself, I wouldn’t have enough time to read certain lines, so I’d have to read the lines quickly and then wait for the next line of dialogue to appear (and these cut-scenes aren’t voiced, so you have to read it in time). Plus, half of the time, these cut-scenes just reiterate what was just established in the previous cut-scene, but I guess that’s why they’re optional. Bravely Default had similar optional cut-scenes, but that game remembered to let the player advance the dialogue.

As a side note, the cut-scenes at the end have the text show up much slower than before (is the game also lagging here?), and when you beat the final boss, the text advances automatically after the voice clip finishes playing, so sometimes, the text bubble will disappear before all the text has even shown up, so you have to listen to the voices.

But enough about the aesthetics, what about the game-play? Well, the dungeons are designed like your average JRPG: non-interactive mazes except for the occasional switch-hunt gimmick. Some dungeons will have different gimmicks that could have the potential to be puzzles, but they usually just boils down to “kill these enemies” or “keep going and hit another switch” (and sometimes, a brief cut-scene will play just beforehand letting you know exactly how you need to interact with the object to progress). The closest the game has to having puzzles are the optional warehouse mini-games: sometimes, while exploring a town, you might come across an NPC who wants you to “reorganize” a storage warehouse in exchange for the items in the chests you can reach, and if you accept, it leads to a sokoban-esque puzzle where you have to figure out which holes to push which boxes into to get all the chests.

Of course, simplistic dungeons like these are par for the course as far as JRPGs go; as mentioned previously, what sets the series apart is its combat, but despite this, the game is still balanced like a traditional JRPG to its detriment. I started the game on hard mode, and the game was pretty good at first, but when I made it to the first boss, I saw that I was dealing single-digit damage to it (for reference, it has thousands of HP). At first, I thought no problem, I probably just need to buy the strongest weapon from the shops; it’s rare when an RPG actually makes me buy weapons, but then I made it to the third boss (specifically, the boss of Coral Castle), and even though I had the strongest weapon available equipped, I was still only dealing single-digit damage (the boss has forty-five thousand (4500) HP, by the way), even when I used a special attack in my combo or when I went into Overdrive mode. Any fan of action games knows that this big a gap between damage dealt and boss HP knows that this is nothing short of tedious (and it’s ridiculous by RPG standards, too), so as an experiment, I did something I don’t normally do: I lowered the difficulty. The result of my experiment? The game’s difficulty literally only affects damage dealt and damage received; enemy AI and tactics are the same (including speed of the attacks), and even the number of enemies that show up in regular encounters is the same. When I found that out, I decided to keep it on Normal mode for the rest of the game. If this were a turn-based RPG with more control over all the party members and more attack options than just “normal attack” and “special attack,” then maybe tweaking the numbers would actually lead to a greater challenge since those are ultimately numbers games, but when the challenge is centered around avoiding enemy attacks and counterattacking them in real time, changing nothing more than the stats will only make the game more tedious (and it bothers me just how many hard modes in action games are nothing more than number-tweaks; THAT ISN’T REAL DIFFICULTY, DANG IT!).

But issues resulting from the game being balanced like a turn-based numbers game don’t end there. You see, enemy AI is also shared between practically all enemies in the game, especially the ones found in normal encounters. Sure, the enemy models will be different, and the attack animation can also vary, but the AI and the way you defeat them is the same: attack them, use free-form movement to circle around them so you avoid their counterattack, then repeat. This is even true for bosses, who are essentially just normal enemies with more health and less allies. It’s so bad, you may not even notice the palette swaps and recycled bosses! There are some large enemies that can hit you before you finish circling them, so you have to change up your strategy a bit and run directly away from them instead (such variety!), so it’s not quite as bad as Drakengard. The main obstacle to this strategy is the fact that the circular arena has no visible borders, so you’ll find yourself running into an invisible wall before getting hit by an attack that could, in theory, have been avoided. Honestly, the only unique enemy in the whole game is a Scorpion boss that swings its tail over the ground, and the only way you can avoid the attack is by jumping (of course, jumping itself is rather annoying due to the awkward button combination needed and the fact that you can’t do it while in free-form movement; even Drakengard got this part right by having jump be a single button!).

Now, you might think this would make the game incredibly dull and boring, and it does, but there are a few annoying parts to the combat as well. Since all enemy AI is the same, practically all enemies have an attack that that isn’t telegraphed, and since your movement is delayed slightly when you finish a combo, you’re pretty much guaranteed to take damage (another example of that turn-based mentality translating into an annoyance for action-oriented combat). There only two bosses I remember who had attacks that gave you time to avoid them (the unicorn and post-mutation Mohs), and these were bosses that ended up being incredibly easy.

But wait, if all enemies have essentially the same AI, how does the game implement a difficulty curve? Simple: it increases their attack and HP. Yup, even if you set the game to normal mode, you can’t escape this unfortunate leftover from the roots of RPGs. However, this manifests less in mindless tedium (although that’s still present) and more in making the unavoidable attacks stronger. For example, one mandatory boss that was recycled from earlier and located in a previously explored dungeon (the regular enemies hadn’t even been buffed) has an event attack that hits all party members and deals almost all of your HP in damage, and the final boss has an event combo that just straight up kills its target (and, of course, the enemies don’t need the elemental fields to trigger their event combos). However, those are just the noteworthy examples; even regular attacks from regular enemies in the late-game can kill an entire party member within one encounter because, as established previously, the party member AI is kinda garbage even without the unavoidable attacks (although dead party members still get experience points, and leveling up will revive them).

In fact, the combat was so poorly done that it made me stop and try to remember just what I liked so much about Phantasia, as that game also has unavoidable attacks and fairly dull enemy encounters (in fact, there’s this one really annoying part where you have to fight a bunch of encounters in a row while on a Pegasus, who slows down your attack speed and prevents the use of special attacks, and since you’re in the air, you only have yourself riding the Pegasus and the one other party member who can fly). Well, I think I figured it out: Phantasia also carried over some of the strategy elements from turn-based RPGs as well. There’s one part where enemies can turn you to stone, so you need to equip an item that prevents this; there’s an enemy that doesn’t have normal melee attacks, but instead throws projectiles in an arc to rain down on you, providing some variety in combat; there’s a part near the end of the game where a symbol on the ground sends you to the dungeon’s…well, dungeon, so you have to break out and then put two and two together when you remember that, not long earlier, a guard for one of the towns gave you an equip-able item that has an “unknown” effect, so you equip it and find out that this item nullifies the effect of the portal, but only for the members who have it equipped, so you have to go forward with only one party member and find chests that contain more of this item so you can go back to the dungeons and bring them across. Phantasia showed promise, and Abyss is a step backward!

However, despite my issues with the combat, I think my biggest issue with the game is with how much running around you have to do. Town exploration starts off well enough, although the overworld could use a bit more guidance with where you have to go to progress the story since locations won’t appear on your map until after you’ve been to said locations yourself. However, once you reach and make it out of the eponymous abyss, the game starts to make you re-traverse the same towns to talk to specific NPCs before you can advance the story. Your characters will be like “we should to to Town X and see Person A” and Person A will be like “Oh man, things are happening, you should go to Town Y and see Person B” and Person B will be like “These happenings are really eventful. We should hold a meeting in Town Z, but before that, you should go speak to Person C who’s in Town W” so you go to Town W and you start to miss the dull combat with the unavoidable attacks; that’s what this game does to people. Some of the cut-scenes don’t even really advance the story and just seem mandatory for the sake of padding. You don’t even get fast travel until around 2/3rds through the game, so there’s a looooot of just B-lining to the different towns just for that slight advancement of the plot to happen. Sometimes, the game will even exacerbate this issue: after you get the airship, you can land it right beside towns, but some cut-scenes will teleport your airship into the ocean, forcing you to head to the docks to board it again (and the only reason it does this is because it has to show you another cut-scene at the docks, even though there’s no in-game explanation for why the airship mysteriously teleported). The game does seem to recognize how bad this is: there are a grand total of two times where a message box will appear after a cut-scene and ask if you want to teleport to the town you need to reach, but all the other times, you need to travel back and forth between those locations yourself.

Overall, not only is this a game I wouldn’t recommend, but it’s also a game that made me apprehensive about buying another RPG ever again. After all, if a game this dull and repetitive can get review scores this high, maybe the genre just isn’t for me (note that even the negative ones don’t say much bad about the COMBAT: oh, the bosses require more strategy? Did we play the same game??). I still have a bunch of RPGs in my backlog (including three more Tales games), so maybe one of them can turn my opinion around; we’ll see. I always prefer game-play over story, and this game seems like one of those RPGs that thinks RPGs are played for the story and not the game-play, and maybe they are for a lot of people, but isn’t that what Walking Simulators are for? (and Visual Novels…and actual novels).

In fact, this game is so story-centric, I’m going to do something I don’t normally do: I’ll try to review the game’s story and give it the attention it wants (apologies for not knowing how to make collapsable spoilers work):

You play as Luke fon Fabre (yes, it’s fon, not von), the son of Duke fon Fabre and nephew of King Ingobert. Luke isn’t allowed to leave the Duke’s manor since he’s underage (and since he was kidnapped as a child by The Empire or something), and this makes Luke upset. Lately, he’s been hearing a voice in his head, but that’s not important right now. One of the only things he’s allowed to do to pass the time is to train with his sword-master, Van (his siblings, Truck and Car, do not make an appearance in the game). Training with Van is how the game introduces combat and tells you what all can be done. However, suddenly, the training is interrupted by some girl who puts all the guards to sleep (but it doesn’t affect you or Van), then loudly announces that she plans on killing Van. When she charges at Van, Luke blocks the attack, but in doing so, he triggers a hyperresonance and the two teleport to some field. Naturally, Luke is freaking out over what just happened, so the girl, who introduces herself as Tear, exposits that they teleported via hyperresonance and that a hyperresonance can only occur when two Seventh Fonists interact with each other, meaning Luke is a Seventh Fonist. Since Luke has lead a hypersheltered life, she also has to exposit that the world doesn’t have subatomic particles; it has fonons; there are seven different fonons, each one representing a different note in an octave, and different combinations of fonons create everything in the world (so everything is basically made up of sound, and this is how Fonic Hymns can physically affect people, like the lullaby that put the guards to sleep). We also find out that a hyperresonance is dangerous since it can completely erase matter, but this never manifests as an attack or other in-game mechanic because that would be too clever for this game; instead, it’s only used as a deus ex machina or other related plot device.

Anyway, Luke is still shaken and just wants to go back home, so they head through the place and you encounter your first real battles along the way. While leaving the place, our heroes reach a caravan, and since Luke doesn’t have any of his father’s vast fortune on his person, Tear has to pay for the ride with a shiny thing. This object never shows up again outside of an optional side quest, so it isn’t important. They say they’re headed for the capital (since that’s where the Duke’s manor is), and they head off. Suddenly, the Tartarus shows up and destroys the only bridge leading back the way they came, and it’s only after reaching Engeve, a farming village, that our heroes realize they’re in Malkuth, not Kimlaska-Lanvaldear (where Luke is from), meaning they’ve been going the wrong way, but they can’t go back because the bridge is out. Since tensions between Malkuth and Kimlaska-Lanvaldear are high (with pretty much everyone thinking war will start soon (except Luke who didn’t know due to his sheltered life)), Luke has to keep his relation to the Kimlaskan royal family a secret until they get back. It’s also around this time that we learn Luke is a jerk; in fact, he acts so rude that the people of Engeve accuse him of being the one behind the theft of their crops. Tear knows his innocence, but Luke is such a jerk that she stays silent in the hopes of teaching him a lesson. Unfortunately for her, the townspeople soon realize their mistake and apologize. Luke does feel the need to bring the thieves to justice, though, and since the cheagles in Cheagle Woods are the suspects, our heroes head there. This is where we meet Ion (apparently you meet Anise (one of those eccentric “I wanna marry everyone!” characters, like Arche from Phantasia) around this time, too, since she’s supposed to be Ion’s protector, but the early game isn’t too memorable; I had to look up a walk-through to remember which scenes take place when). When Luke introduces himself, Ion lets us know that Luke’s name means “the light of the sacred flame” in ancient Ispanian, but later we learn that ancient Ispanian is supposedly well known, and the only reason Luke doesn’t know it is because of his sheltered existence, so does Ion just like stating random obvious facts? “Hey, Anise, you have two pony tails.” “Yeah, I noticed.” “Hey, Jade, you’re wearing glasses.” “I’m well aware” “Hey, Luke, you’re acting like a jerk.” “Shut up!”

Deeper in the woods, our team meets the cheagle elder, who explains that Mieu, another cheagle, accidentally burned down the part of the forest where the Ligers live, so as revenge, the Ligers set up a protection racket where the cheagles have to provide them with food or the Ligers will eat the cheagles, and this is why the cheagles are stealing food from Engeve. I don’t remember what the game’s explanation is for why the cheagles didn’t ask the citizens of Engeve for help (or at least for free food, since they’re supposedly friends of Yulia, an important and well-revered historical figure), but whatever it was, it certainly didn’t have anything to do with killing the Ligers since that’s exactly what our heroes plan to do. Also, as punishment for Mieu’s actions, the cheagle elder commands Mieu to be Luke’s servant for a year and gives Mieu the Sorcerer’s Ring or whatever it’s called so that Mieu can speak the human language (without it, all the cheagles can say is “mieu mieu mieu mieu,” which makes Mieu’s name kinda lazy in-universe). Mieu can breathe fire, as demonstrated when mieu burns the rest of Cheagle Woods down during a cut-scene where it (I don’t think we ever learn Mieu’s gender) shoots fire at some grass without any adverse effects. As a game mechanic, you can use Mieu’s fire to burn trees to form bridges or light torches that make bridges appear. There’s an optional cut-scene that shows Luke supposedly going crazy with Mieu’s fire ability and the rest of the team getting on to him, saying that he could start a forest fire, but Mieu already proved that this wouldn’t happen when it tried to set fire to the grass and failed, so it really just comes across as everyone else being overly paranoid. This part of the game also shows that even though Luke is a jerk, he can use his arrogance to help him solve problems: “Luke, if you aren’t willing to get your clothes wet crossing the river, then you’ll just be a burden.” “I’m not a burden! Hey, I know! Mieu, burn this tree so it will form a bridge!”

After killing the Liger Queen and leaving Cheagle Woods, you get captured by Jade (a colonel in the Malkuth army) and brought aboard the Tartarus as his prisoner, but the Tartarus gets attacked not long afterwards. A cut-scene shows Jade encountering Largo, one of the six God-Generals, and Largo puts a fon slot seal on Jade, weakening him to the point where he’s at your level, so he joins your party to team up against the invaders. I don’t remember if our heroes get Largo to retreat or if they run away, but the point of this scene is so the game can give Jade a backstory as an awe-inspiring war hero without breaking the balance of the game or having a conflict between plot and game-play (it’s never brought up again outside of the occasional optional cut-scene), similar to how the previous scene of him capturing you is both to get him in your party and to get you across the boulevard of broken bridges. However, Luke can’t bring himself to kill other people, so Tear puts some of the generic guards to sleep and moves ahead with Jade, but Luke wakes up one of the guards and ends up being forced to kill him, so he starts freaking out again. Tear and Jade come back to check on what happened, and during the conversation, Jade comments that if Luke isn’t willing to kill people, then he’s just a burden that deserves to be left behind. This comment really gets to Luke since he’s called things a burden earlier in the game, so through sheer arrogance, he overcomes his fear of killing people and rejoins the party. I’ll be honest, I haven’t seen that plot point resolved in that way, so this game gets a point for uniqueness. Eventually, you get ambushed by a couple of the God-Generals, but Guy (Luke’s childhood friend and servant of House Fabre) shows up and helps everyone escape, then he joins your party.

Side note: When I played Half-Minute Hero II, I thought them naming the third party member “Guy” was one of the few jokes in the game, along with the other two party members having the same name but with the vowels switched. However, apparently, “Guy” is a more common name than I thought. I guess that just goes with the game’s theme of taking everything too seriously despite one of the prequel’s good points being that the plot was more humorous.

Side note 2: For me, Jade is the most relatable character in the game since he’s always calm and rational, but also has a sense of dry wit (of course, my wit is dry in more ways than one). He may even be the most relatable fictional character I’ve seen in a video game, even more relatable than Kalas (from Baten Kaitos). Anyway, back to the abyssal story:

Now, you have to head to St. Binah for…directions, I think? Like I said, not much memorable happens in the early game. You learn that the regular bridge to get to the place you have to go is out (this is a different bridge than the one destroyed earlier), so you have to find a shallow part on the river and cross there. During the crossing, we meet Arietta, another of the six God-Generals and person who used to be in charge of protecting Ion before Anise, and we learn that the Liger Queen was her adopted mother, and she’s upset that you killed her and wants revenge. Luckily, the ground splits and she gets knocked out by miasma leaking from the ground. Jade wants to kill her so she won’t live to attack the party again, but everyone else is like something something morals, so they leave. Finally, you reach Kaitzur, the border fortress between the two nations and few instances where you actually need to go here. I think there’s a subplot about Luke needing a passport or something, but it gets resolved fairly uneventfully. However, when they reach the port, we find out that Arietta did something prevent everyone from leaving, so they have to go to Coral Castle to fight her. Coincidentally, Coral Castle is where everyone found Luke after he was kidnapped. Oh, Coral Castle is also when Anise joins the party as a fighter and where you’re introduced to back attacks; if an enemy collides with your back, it results in a surprise encounter where your two standby characters replace your 3rd and 4th fighters in battle (before this point, if an enemy collides with your back, it just triggers a regular battle). After defeating Arietta, she still manages to get away alive, but now our heroes can leave for Chessedonia, which is also on the border but is apparently independent from both nations. Here, you get ambushed by Sync, another God-General, but rather than attack you, he marks Guy with a plot curse symbol (also I think there was a minor diversion of Ion getting kidnapped by the God-Generals and brought to a nearby ruins, so you have to go save Ion), and then you can move to another port to go back home, but then the ship you’re on gets attacked! There’s a little robot you have to chase, and there’s a mildly humorous moment where it says something like “I’ll be back!” then jumps in the ocean and short-circuits (you never see it again). Then, you meet the one behind the attack: Dist, another God-General, but rather than fight him directly, you fight one of his machines, and after winning, Dist flies away on his flying chair (Dist is also supposed to be somewhat of a comic-relief character, but little he does can top the robot’s scene from earlier). After this, you finally make it back to Baticul, where Luke’s home is.

Naturally, Luke is relieved to be back home, and after going through at least two emotional breakdowns, he’s ready to stay at the manor for the rest of his life, but we’ve only been playing the game for about a dozen hours, and this is an RPG! It can’t end here! What crazy event forces our heroes back together and sets them on the path to save the world from hitherto un-established threats? Simple: destiny. No, really: Luke is summoned to an audience with the king (Luke’s uncle) and is told that the Score, a set of predictions that have always come true and were written by Yulia herself (or was it Lorelei? I don’t remember. Lorelei is another historical figure, by the way), claims that “the light of the sacred flame” (a.k.a. Luke) will go to Akzeriuth, a mining village which is having miasma trouble, but Luke is still a jerk and doesn’t want to go. None of the members present can have this since the Score is said to bring prosperity to humanity if it’s followed, but this doesn’t convince Luke to go back into a world where he’s seemingly always being attacked and everyone seems to resent him for some reason. However, the king has an ace up his sleeve: if Luke doesn’t go to Akzeriuth, the king will execute Van for treason since Van was blamed for Luke’s disappearance or something. You see, besides Guy, Van is the only person Luke likes since everyone else gives him orders to do things he doesn’t like doing, but Van is always kind to him and respects him, and Luke gets to do things he likes while with Van. However, Luke can’t believe that Van was imprisoned, so he goes to see Van in prison. Here, Van tells Luke that the Score also says that “the light of the sacred flame” is destined to destroy Akzeriuth, but he has a super secret plan to get rid of the miasma and save the town, but keep it a secret; don’t you blab it because reasons. At this point, if I were Luke and I somehow both worked up the courage to block the initial assassination attempt and managed to avoid getting killed by wildlife, I’d put two and two together and be like “nah, I’ll let you get executed.” and live the rest of my life in peace and luxury (or I’d at least ask Van why I’d have to keep it a secret if we’re supposed to be doing something good), but of course, Luke isn’t that smart, so he agrees to go. I just assumed the game isn’t clever enough to let you perform actions to avoid this hyperobvious trap, so I just went along with it. As our newly reunited team sets off, we find that Natalia, princess of Kimlaska-Lanvaldear and our final party member, has snuck out of the castle to join us on our quest.

At Akzeriuth, we see that the miasma leakage is so severe that you’ll have trouble seeing where you’re going if you happen to be in natural light while playing the game (you’ll pretty much just see your reflection in the screen). There are a ton of locations like this, like the Liger Queen’s nest, the Radiation Gate’s side paths, and pretty much any place filled with miasma, and it makes me prefer the washed-out palettes of old GBA ports (maybe the GBA’s lack of a backlight isn’t the only reason for those palettes). Anyway, as you traverse deeper into the mines, Luke tells the others that he has to go do something and breaks off to find Van, who is at Akzeriuth’s sephiroth (the sephiroths are pillars from the Dawn Age that were used to lift the world’s crust above the miasma). Basically, Van’s claims his plan is to use Luke’s hyperresonance to teleport the town away from the miasma leakage (Luke’s special ability is that he can trigger a hyperresonance all on his own, without the need of another Seventh Fonist), but his actual plan is to say a key-phrase that makes Luke unleash his hyperresonance in a way that destroys the sephiroth. The key-phrase is “foolish replica Luke,” and this is how we find out that Luke isn’t an original human, but a replica of someone else. His plan works, and our heroes, as well as the rest of Akzeriuth, fall into the Qliphoth, the eponymous Abyss (basically a sea of liquid miasma below the crust, with few areas of solid ground). Our heroes magically avoid being killed by the fall or the liquid miasma as they landed on solid ground, but the rest of Akzeriuth sinks into the Qliphoth, with one scene showing a random child clinging to driftwood, begging for help before sinking into the liquid miasma. This doesn’t come across like the emotional gut punch the developers were going for not just because the animation is stiffer than your average PS1 animation, but also since it’s just a “think of the children!” moment rather than showing a character we actually have some connection to, like, say, one of the miners we interacted with earlier (with the miner’s kid if necessary); the game could show the miner risking and sacrificing his life to get his kid over to what is pretty much the only piece of solid land in the entire Qliphoth as our heroes watch from said piece of land helplessly, and it looks like the kid might make it, and one of our heroes reaches out to try to catch the child’s hand, but they just barely miss each other and then the kid dies. Isn’t that a much more tragic event than what the game does?

Anyway, back to things that actually happen in the game: all the other party members are upset because it’s pretty obvious that Luke was the one who destroyed the town. Luke tries to explain that he was tricked by Van and didn’t know this would happen, but he does it in an arrogant way of course, so all the party members leave him one by one, and he starts to cry. Shortly after you get control over Luke again, you’re ambushed by Asch, another of the six God-Generals, and one who looks mysteriously like Luke (he also has a beef with Luke). The team has met Ash a couple other times in the game prior to now, but it’s around this point that we find out the reason Luke and Ash look so similar is because Luke is a replica of Ash; Asch was the original Luke, but Van kidnapped him to create a replica and replace him with it. This also explains why Asch hates Luke so much; to him, Luke stole his childhood and his life. This is also supposed to explain how Luke and Asch can communicate with each other telepathically (something that has also happened a few times in the game), but this is really more for plot convenience. Anyway, unlike your previous encounters with Asch, this time you actually get sent into a battle against him, but it’s a supposed-to-lose battle, and Luke gets knocked out. Asch heads into the nearby Yulia City, the only town that was left in the Qliphoth back in the Dawn Age, in order to gather up the rest of the party members and head after Van (even though Luke is in a coma, he can still see this through Asch because of the aforementioned magic telepathy powers). Around this time, we find out that Tear and Van (who are brothers, by the way; I don’t remember when that’s first brought up) are actually from Yulia City, and the citizens of the city are meant to watch over the world and the Score. From them, we learn that all of the worlds sephiroths are destined to fall; not just Akzeriuth’s. St. Binah is next, followed by Chessedonia. Also, everyone in Yulia City refers to the rest of the world as the “Outer Lands.” Anyway, as Asch gathers up all the party members (except Tear, who elects to stay behind), Luke realizes “whoa, they all chose you over me,” and this is the event that leads to him deciding to be less of a jerk. The team boards the Tartarus (which just happened to land near where everyone fell in from) and the elder of Yulia City helps them get the Tartarus back onto the Outer Lands. Now, you play as Asch, and your goal is to find some cave and explore it, looking for clues on what Van plans on doing. Guy ends up breaking off from the group since he’s worried Luke won’t be able to make it on his own, and when the rest of the team makes it into the deepest part of the cave, they find a replicator and two identically-looking cheagles. Natalia assumes that the one who’s fire breath is weaker is the replica, but the data from the machine says the opposite, and Asch or someone (characters usually take turns delivering different parts of the exposition) explains how the replication process can weaken or even kill the original in certain circumstances. Just before leaving the cave, Asch kicks Luke out of his mind and Luke wakes up.

Now, we’re back to controlling Luke. He goes to see Tear, who’s in a field of flowers, and this is where Luke vows to become a better person (a change we pretty much knew was going to happen from the beginning of the game). To symbolize this, he cuts his hair. Tear comments on how people can’t just change overnight, and this is represented by Luke yelling “shut up” a few more times in the game, but after teleporting out of the Qliphoth and meeting back up with the rest of the team, who were abandoned by Asch (although Asch left them the Tartarus), they’re all surprised at Luke’s change in behavior. At this point, the team is in Daath, the HQ of “the Order of Lorelei” (the people in charge of making sure the Score’s predictions come true). The six God-Generals and Van supposedly work for the Order of Lorelei, but Ion is also supposedly high ranking. Despite this, Ion and Natalia were captured and are being held by Daath’s military (known as the Oracle Knights) for…some reason, so you have to break in and free them. With Ion on your side, you can use her powers to open the seals protecting the entrances to the world’s sephiroths (and that’s it; Ion is never a party member). As you reach the harbor and prepare to leave, the Tartarus breaks down for the sole purpose of having the team repair it at Keterburg (a town in the snowy part of the game world) and we learn a bit about Jade’s past. Frankly, this scene could have been saved for when the team has to go to Keterburg later on (I know this since I had genuinely forgotten that this scene takes place this early in the game). After all, this new information doesn’t affect anyone’s decisions and doesn’t result in any new combat bits while the team is there; they leave Daath, end up in Keterburg for a bit, then leave for where they were trying to go in the first place. If this were a TV show, this would be the like the filler episode that happens when the anime catches up to the manga and has to come up with a diversion.

Moving on: the team is supposed to head to Grand Chokmah, Malkuth’s capital (I think this was to relay the news about the Qliphoth and the sephiroths to Malkuth’s emperor; so many of these plot-points are uneventful and forgettable), but only Jade is allowed through the forest since Malkuth thinks this could be a trap (remember, tensions are high between Kimlaska-Lanvaldear and Malkuth because of a combination of history and the Score, which both nations follow). Jade tells everyone to wait for him to return, but oh no, you hear a scream and are told by a wounded Malkuth soldier that the Oracle Knights are here! Except oh no, literally none of the other Malkuth soldiers noticed their wounded companion or heard about the Oracle Knights being here or apparently even heard the scream, so in order to stop the Oracle Knights, you have to sneak past them! Or don’t; if you get caught a couple times by the same guard, you’ll get sent into a battle. When you make it to the end, the plot symbol on Guy finally decides to be relevant (would’ve been a waste if Luke had never gone to Akzeriuth!) and Guy starts attacking Luke, but this doesn’t result in a battle or any other interactive moment; what do you think this is, a video game? Instead, an earthquake happens before Guy can do any harm, revealing Sync nearby, using the symbol to control him. Sync retreats just in time for the Malkuth soldiers to come in and accuse our heroes of trespassing (and maybe killing a few guards), so they get arrested. Jade uses his position to get them out of prison, and Ion removes the plot symbol from Guy before it has a chance to become anything more than a means to make Luke wonder why Guy would want to kill him. You see, the plot symbol isn’t powerful enough for full mind control; instead, it prevents rational thought and digs up old memories, so there was a point in Guy’s life where he wanted to kill Luke. When Guy sees that this is troubling Luke, he explains that he used to live on an island called Hod, but then Kimlaska-Lanvaldear and Malkuth started a war over it, and this led to Hod being destroyed and sent into the Qliphoth, not unlike Akzeriuth, as well as most of Guy’s friends and family being killed by Kimlaskan soldiers when Guy was still a small child, and this is the moment he was willing to kill Luke: Guy had sworn revenge against the entire House fon Fabre, including Luke, for what happened at Hod. Decent backstory, as it shows that Guy was able to come around on that whole revenge thing and even became friends with Luke, but I can’t help but think the plot symbol’s potential was squandered (after all, that isn’t the symbol’s real name; it’s just all it ever amounts to, and there are plenty of other ways the game could bring up Guy’s backstory).

When our heroes finally get an audience with Emperor Peony IX, we see that the game has a surprising subversion of anime stereotypes by making the emperor of the rival country not antagonistic, and instead a friendly, easygoing guy. Of course, that says more about anime stereotypes than this game’s ability to subvert them (I was planning on having a nice emperor in one of my games before I realized how obtuse Unity scripting tutorials can be). After this, our heroes head to St. Binah to evacuate the townspeople (since that land is the one that’s going to fall next), but the land has already started to sink! There’s a fissure too big to get across, so our heroes decide to travel to Sheridan, a city with prominent inventors, in the hopes of getting a flying machine so they can cross the fissure and evacuate the people (and naturally, the ground stops collapsing and patiently waits for our heroes to accomplish this task). In Sheridan, not only do we learn that Guy’s hobby is crafting fon machines (he gets excited upon seeing all the technology in the city), but we find out that someone did invent a flying machine, but it got stuck in some highlands (similar to a dungeon, but it has the overworld’s music, camera rotation ability, and lag), so you have to go help the pilot. You’re informed that the first model of the plane was damaged in the test flight, but lucky for you, there’s a second model you can use, and thus you can finally save the people of St. Binah, and the ground can finally collapse with a clear conscience.

Our heroes head to the sephiroth responsible for St. Binah in an attempt to prevent it from sinking into the sea of miasma like Akzeriuth did. The sephiroth reacts to Tear since they can only be turned on by descendants of Yulia (this is how we find out Tear is a descendant of Yulia, by the way), but even though the sephiroth’s seal was up (indicating nobody, including Van, had been in there), we find that Van had inputted code to prevent the sephiroths from being used properly. Jade explains that all the sephiroths are connected, which is how Van could affect one without actually being at that specific sephiroth. Despite being unable to interact with the sephiroths in their intended way, Luke can use his hyperresonance to hack out Van’s code and hack in commands to tell the sephiroth not to let the land sink into the Qliphoth. However, we find out that Engeve is also supported by this sephiroth, which means it will fall next. Our heroes rush out to evacuate the town but oh no, Kimlaska-Lanvaldear and Malkuth are at war with each other (Kimlaska blamed Malkuth for the destruction of Akzeriuth), and they’re all on the land that’s about to collapse! This leads to a gimmick where you have to walk from Engeve to Chessedonia (the bridges are fixed by this point) without triggering a battle (which is tricky since enemies are programmed to spawn right in front of you). If you do trigger a battle, the team talks about how they weren’t able to avoid conflict, but this is why we have to keep going: to prevent more death (this happens even if you immediately run from said battles without killing anyone).

At this point, Engeve and the rest of the battlefield has begun to fall, but our heroes have a new idea: lower the land slowly so that nobody gets killed. You see, even though a small leak of miasma from a minor fissure can knock out a God-General, the rest of the world won’t be poisoned by the Qliphoth’s miasma (which is so thick in its atmosphere that it even manifests itself as a liquid sea of death) because shut up. The sephiroth for Chessedonia is in those ruins you already explored, marking the first instance of re-traversal in the game (although the boss is that scorpion instead of one of the God-Generals). Luke uses his hyperresonance to hack some code into the sephiroth to lower the lands slowly, and the plan works as everyone in Chessedonia makes it into the miasma-filled Qliphoth safely. Before you can go to any more sephiroths, you have to go to Daath and get Ion back in your party again (she left your party and even Anise for some reason; I don’t remember). However, the war was part of the Score, so the Oracle Knights want to restart it and they bring your party to Baticul. Here, we learn that Natalia isn’t of royal blood, but was adopted when the original daughter of the king ended up being dead on arrival. The bad guys threaten to kill Natalia and Luke, but the rest of the team comes to the rescue, and as our heroes escape, the citizens block the guards to show their support for Natalia. Now the team heads to Belkend, a city of researchers, since I guess they got tipped off that Van was there, but now they have to head through a hitherto unmentioned marshland so that Natalia can get separated while moping about her heritage being different from what she thought it was so that she can get attacked by a nearly invincible monster whose only weakness is a certain type of flower (oh, and because the flightstone was stolen which means they can’t use the flying machine). It’s ridiculously out-of-place moments like this that are the most memorable parts of the game’s story.

In Belkend, Van lets Luke know that the only reason he created Luke in the first place was to throw the Score off-track, and now he doesn’t need him anymore. Despite all that’s happened, Luke continues to refer to Van as “Master Van,” something that gets pointed out a few times throughout the course of the game (even by Van himself). We also discover that Van’s endgame is to create a replica of the entire planet so that humanity will be freed from the Score. Basically, Van also lived on Hod (in fact, he served House Gardios, Guy’s family) and also lost much because of the war. However, Van realized that the main reason the war started was because it was predicted in the Score, so he dedicated his life to eliminating the Score so that no one else would have to die because of a garbage reason like “it was predestined.” To be honest, this game managed to take the generic “I want to destroy the world” villain and give it a completely believable motivation (something even Undertale failed to do. Fight me). Most of the time, these villains have either no motivation outside of being cartoonishly evil or they have the “tragic” backstory of “people were mean to me in the past, so there’s nothing worth saving in this world” and then you teach the final boss the true meaning of friendship by beating it up, but this game actually goes through the effort of creating a world and a situation in said world that could make someone think that this is the right thing to do. Sure, literally everyone on the current planet would die, but to Van, he could just make a replica and that would essentially bring that person back to life (this also explains why Van is willing to kill to get what he wants). It would essentially be the same world, just without the Score; the same Score that everyone else follows so religiously; the same Score responsible for destroying his homeland and killing most of his friends and family, all solely for the sake of it happening and that arbitrary promise of a prosperous future. This game gets another point.

Back to the main plot: at some point, possibly even before our heroes travel into the marshland, we learn that the reason the Qliphoth is liquid is because the planet’s core is vibrating, so our heroes need to find a way to stop the vibration which will, in turn, stop producing the miasma and solidify the Qliphoth. In Belkend, you learn that you have to measure the frequency of the vibrations before the scientists can create an item to stop it, so you have to travel to a sephiroth to take measurements. The sephiroth they choose to visit is the one in Tataroo Valley, the same place Luke and Tear ended up back at the beginning of the game after the first hyperresonance. As they approach the gate, the party is beset by a unicorn that accuses Tear of being miasma, and after the team kills it in battle, Tear uses her powers to revive it. The unicorn learns its lesson and is now nice to Tear, and our heroes can move on to the sephiroth. It’s hard to take the plot seriously when crazy stuff like this keeps happening. Anyway, when our heroes make it to the sephiroth, Luke uses his hyperresonance to hack code telling the rest of the outer lands to descend while the rest of the team takes the measurements, then it’s off to Sheridan to create a device to stop the core’s stabilization–ha ha ha ha! Sorry, I couldn’t contain myself; you see, this is the part where you have to fly around everywhere to get the leaders of both nations to sign the peace treaty for the war that happened around Engeve, as well as let them know that the outer lands will descend into the Qliphoth. Without the flightstone, you can only travel by sea, which makes this even more annoying since you can’t just B-line to your next location; you have to travel to the closest dock, then walk. Also during this, Natalia overcomes her insecurities about being adopted and our heroes have to help her convince the king to accept her as family because all the memories they have with each other are real even though they don’t share blood. I’ll be honest; I just don’t get these plots. Maybe it’s because the culture I grew up in taught me that I’m my own person, and even though family is important, your family and their actions don’t define you; you and your own actions define you. Regardless of the reason, whenever I see a dispute between fictional characters over the significance of being related or not being related, my reaction is “why does this need to be a thing? How could this even realistically be a thing? What kind of person in the real world would need to learn these morals?”

Anyway, after that back and forth, you end up in Daath where you get a letter from Dist saying that he has the flightstone and is in Sheridan, but Jade figures out that it’s a bluff and that the flightstone is really in Daath being kept by some random civilian in the middle of a religious ritual. You can’t fight him because, as mentioned previously, he’s an innocent civilian and that would be wrong, so Tear puts him to sleep, letting our heroes steal the flightstone back. Normally, I wouldn’t think too much of this scene, but then our heroes briefly consider how underhanded this tactic is, only to then quickly brush it off as being for the greater good (because that totally isn’t the same mentality that led to the creation of someone like Van in the first place). It isn’t even brought up again, so it’s not like recognizing the act as a dirty trick does anything to advance the plot or further the characters; it’s literally just “we know we did something wrong, but the ends justify the means, so we’re totally the good guys here.” Isn’t that a line normally reserved for the villains?

Anyway, now you travel to Sheridan in preparation of stabilizing the core. Speaking to the workers there lets you know that you’ll need to perform a really dangerous procedure and that you should be well prepared before starting. The plan is to pilot the Tartarus (which is no longer needed since you’ve long had the Albiore, the flying machine) into the core through where Akzeriuth fell, then activate the machine and use a large fonic symbol painted on the Tartarus’s deck to escape. Their language implies that you’re about to beat the game, or at least reach a point of no return, but no; it’s just a boss fight and you’re back to your normal world-exploration. However, the story does take a turn when Legretta, another God-General, attacks the city with a large platoon of Oracle Knights to try to stop you from stabilizing the core. The residents of the town block their advance so our heroes can escape, but the bad guys are getting desperate so they cut down the civilians, including the ones we interacted with to get the device created in the first place, so it’s a much more powerful scene than Qliphoth Kid (especially since there was a rivalry between two factions of Sheridan that you had to quell to get them to work together on the project). The one thing that could improve it is if Iemon didn’t spend his dying breath giving exposition; yeah, I know that you collaborated with the rival faction right before your final moments because I’m the one that orchestrated the collaboration. Something simpler, like “Good luck, Luke. Don’t let our efforts be in vain,” would work better. After escaping the town and arriving at the harbor, you realize that it’s covered in sleeping gas, so one of the team members uses a fonic arte to blow it away. We then find out that the sleeping gas was set by the Sheridan citizens that were at the pier in order to stop the Oracle Knights from sabotaging the Tartarus, but then Legretta shows up with the unaffected Oracle Knights, so once again, the citizens have to block their way so our heroes can escape, and once again, they get cut down (though these have much better written last words if you pay attention to this cut-scene; third time’s the charm I suppose). As you travel to the locaiton, a cut-scene plays that shows the Tartarus making it into the core successfully, but when our heroes go to leave, they see that the fonic symbol meant to help them escape was erased, and Sync shows up to fight our heroes (Sync was the one who erased the symbol, obviously). After defeating him, his mask breaks off and it’s revealed that he has the same face as Ion. It turns out that Sync was a replica of Ion, but the Ion we know is also a replica of the original Ion. You see, Ion was the only member of the Order of Lorelei who could…I wanna say read the Score, but this universe also has countless Order of Lorelei missionaries around the world to give people their Score readings, so maybe Ion had to transcribe the Score from its original fonic stone form into the modern written word, and the Order had to spread the right parts of the Score to the right parts of the world using the universe’s slow-moving medieval transportation. Regardless, the original Ion got sick and was dying, so the Order created a bunch of replicas (one of which was Sync) until they finally got the Ion we know, who was the closest to the original. All of the rejected replicas were disposed of, except for Sync who was taken in by Van, while the new Ion took the place of the old Ion, who had died. These events gave Sync an inferiority complex, making him believe that he is nothing in this world and his only hope is Van’s replica world, but since he couldn’t defeat you, he thinks himself worthless, so he jumps off the Tartarus into the planet’s core in spite of Ion trying to convince him not to. These events also explain why Anise replaced Arietta as Ion’s protector; nobody wanted to tell her the original Ion, the one she had been protecting, had died. Our heroes then proceed to redraw the necessary fonic symbol and escape the Tartarus in time before the weight of the planet crushes it; this is in spite of the people of Sheridan talking about how little time they’d have even without being ambushed and having to redraw the symbol, so maybe Sync has a point about him being kinda worthless.

Despite the core’s vibration being stopped, the game isn’t over yet. We still have to visit the rest of the sephiroths in order to lower the Outer Lands! And we can’t do that from other sephiroths even though they’re all supposed to be connected because reasons! Oh, and it turns out the voice Luke heard back at the beginning of the game was Lorelei’s voice, and he’s trapped in the core which is also infected with miasma. We also discover that Tear’s body is infected with the miasma; the sephiroths are infected with the miasma as well, and each time a sephiroth reacts to Tear’s presence and turns on, miasma is absorbed into her body, and if she keeps this up, she’ll die. See? That part with the unicorn wasn’t a stupid diversion after all; it was totally foreshadowing! Anyway, the next sephiroth is in the highlands from earlier, although you have to enter from another part of the island to reach it. You also have to activate three of four devices for the main entrance to appear (and for one of the rooms, if you solve the gimmick, then leave and enter the room again, the fon machine won’t render even though its collision is still there). After entering the main gate, we come across a nonviolent maintenance robot and Guy goes all fanboy at the Dawn Age tech again. Unfortunately, the elevator leading to the sephiroth is out of power, and the only power source is the maintenance robot, so you have to kill it and take its power to use the elevator to the sephiroth. Luke uses his hackerresonance powers again, then it’s off to the sephiroth in a volcano near Daath. Our team is informed about a secret shortcut to the passage, and after finding it and entering the volcano, Anise goes out of her way to act overly suspicious, but otherwise, this is fairly uneventful. Then, there’s a brief detour where you go back to the cave where you played as Asch; you find him trying to stop Van, but he gets knocked down. Tear tries to convince Van to stop trying to destroy the world, but Van is having none of it and leaves. Asch rushes away in pursuit, and Natalia realizes that nobody will come back to this cave, so they should probably free the cheagle everyone left there and find it a new home. After dropping the cheagle off with the last survivor of Sheridan, you head to Keterburg on your way to Mt. Roneal and learn that Dist has been waiting for you to show up this whole time (remember his letter about the flightstone from earlier?) and he got sick from the cold because of it. There’s a scene where Jade enters the room Dist is in while everyone else waits outside, then we hear screams before Jade walks out (I think Jade was trying to get information, but I don’t remember what he discovers). Jade then sends a soldier to arrest Dist and our heroes head for Mt. Roneal. Here, they have the showdown with the three remaining God-Generals: Largo, Arietta, and Legretta. After defeating them, there’s an earthquake and the three fall into the chasm that results from said earthquake, but our heroes emerge from the earthquake unscathed and continue to the sephiroth.

Now, it’s time for everyone to head to the Absorption Gate (this sephiroth, along with the Radiation Gate, are responsible for creating the fon belt, and by extension, the planet storm that caused the core to vibrate and create the miasma). Luke even has a cut-scene with each party member because this is all really about to end; no more fake-outs for realzies. The Absorption Gate is pretty long, and the devs reuse some of the earlier gimmicks in an attempt to seem like this is the final test of everything you’ve learned, but if you’ve learned anything, it’s that most of the game’s “puzzles” are solved by fighting enemies and hitting one-note switches, as is sadly common in RPGs. There is one neat part where the group splits into three teams, and you have to switch between the teams at different times to get back together; it’s the only part in the game where you get to control characters besides Luke or Asch in battle, but it highlights just how dull the game is when you only have to worry about one or two meat-shield-enemies with recycled AI instead of the large groups normally present in normal encounters. When you make it to the end, you encounter Van. That’s right, this is the final, epic showdown between the heroes and the villain, and of course, the whole thing is undercut by the fact that the same enemy AI is being reused for everyone, including Van. Is Van running toward you, preparing a melee attack with his sword? Just run away and it looks like you’re playing a fun game of tag (plus, this can help give your allies more time to cast fonic artes). After defeating Van, he drops his weapon and comments on how strong Luke has become, then he also jumps off the side, falling into the planet’s core. There’s an earthquake, and Luke realizes there’s no way they can make it to the Radiation Gate in time, but as luck would have it, Asch is at the Radiation Gate, and together, they use their hyperresonance powers to lower the Outer Lands and avoid the crisis. Oh, and Lorelei says something about someone who’s trying to seize glory trying to take his power and that he’ll send you the key, but screw that; Van’s dead and the world’s safe, so we’re going home. There definitely aren’t any unresolved plot threads we’ll have to deal with later.

The game time-skips forward a month; Luke is back at the manor, Natalia is back at the castle, Anise is back at Daath, Jade is back in Grand Chokmah, Tear is back in Yulia City, and Guy defected to Malkuth. Also, the Order of Lorelei as well as the leaders of Kimlaska-Lanvaldear and Malkuth have stopped giving Score readings since pretty much everyone in power has seen the negative effects of following the Score by now (the citizens are lost and confused without it, though). Back to my anime analogy, this would be like the first episode of the next season. Luke is busy thinking about how he’ll never be able to replace Asch because he’s a mere replica, when suddenly, he gets interrupted by a message that the king wants to see him. It turns out that even though Van very clearly dropped his sword, it’s not where he dropped it anymore, and apparently the planet storm has gotten stronger and threteans to destroy the core stabilizer. Luke then takes a ferry to go see everyone, and during his trip, he reads some of the letters he got from everyone throughout the month (the letters just explain where everyone is now while also reflecting the personalities of the characters who wrote them). While gathering the team, we learn that Asch is looking for the key of Lorelei, which is in two parts: Asch got the sword part, and Luke was supposed to have gotten the jewel part, but said jewel is nowhere to be seen. He also warns our heroes to watch out for the God-Generals, meaning they’re still alive. We knew Dist had broken out of jail based on what Guy told us, but the others had been presumed dead. However, another threat looms on the horizon: as you head to Daath to get Anise back in your party (the last one left), Tear collapses; it turns out the miasma is back, and suddenly, the entire outside world has that awful, dark palette. We only have decades to fix this before someone gets infected with miasma toxicosis!

Despite the miasma, a more urgent issue arises: we soon find out that Anise is with Mohs, the Grand Maestro of the Order of Lorelei and NPC who tried to argue against the peace treaty from earlier in the game since it deviated from the Score (he’s more or less a non-entity until now). What’s worse is that Ion is with them; it seems Mohs wants Ion to read the part of the Score in the volcano, but Ion is too weak to do so and will die if forced to read it, so you have to try to save Ion. Legretta tries to stop you, but Arietta comes in to buy you some time since she knows you’re trying to save Ion (this is the payoff for Jade not killing her back in their first encounter). Unfortunately, the secret passage from earlier is blocked off, so we need another way into the volcano. This results in going through a new dungeon with a rising lava gimmick (you have to run across when the lava is low). When you finally make it to where Anise and Mohs are, you see that Ion is reading the Score, and you learn that you’ll figure out a way to neutralize the miasma if you go to Belkend. Ion collapses, Tear rushes over to Ion, and Ion uses one last power to take the miasma from Tear’s body before vanishing. We also learn that Ion was supposed to be a “he” this entire time despite being very clearly voiced by a woman. More importantly, we learn that Mohs got Anise’s assistance by threatening her parents, and with the deed done, he releases them and moves on. Anise’s grief over Ion’s death leads to her confessing that she was actually a spy for Mohs ever since the beginning of the game. Basically, Anise’s parents are really naiive and were scammed out of money and ended up in debt, but Mohs offered to bail them out in exchange for them working for the Order of Lorelei. Anise was born into this and had to work for him, too. The rest of the team is able to comfort her, and with her parents safe, Anise rejoins the team. However, before our heroes get to leave, Arietta shows up again and starts whining about how Anise killed Ion. Arietta challenges Anise to a duel, and Anise accepts because she’s tired of Arietta’s crap. The duel doesn’t happen right away, though, since Largo is chosen as the mediator to determine where the duel should be held, and if you know anything about Largo, it’s that it’s a spanish word meaning “slow.”

Anyway, as per Ion’s Score reading, the team heads to Belkend where they see someone collapse and die. Apparently, someone is going around pretending to be giving out Score readings, but this is just a trick to extract their replica data. If you remember, extracting replica data weakens the originals, and in this case, they become so weak that the miasma actually affects them! The horror! We learn that this fake Score reader has headed to Baticul, but enough of that “saving people” nonsense; we learn that Asch is in Mt. Roneal, still looking for the Jewel of Lorelei, so our heroes head over there to check on him. Yup, another dungeon re-traversal. Before leaving Baticul, Luke comments on how he didn’t learn how to stop the miasma, and that’s when Jade explains that the only way to get rid of the miasma is to use a hyperresonance so powerful, it would cost the lives of the ten thousand seventh fonists needed to create said hyperresonance. Anyway, in Mt. Roneal, we find that the jewel isn’t there either and that Asch still has animosity toward his replica and storms off, but this trip isn’t a total loss since Luke finds a pendant addressed to Meryl, Natalia’s name before being adopted by the king of Kimlaska. Luke elects to keep this a secret from Natalia for now, presumably remembering all of the family drama that happened earlier. Now it’s time to head to Baticul to ask the king about who Natalia’s father is, and maybe find that person giving fake score readings. While in Baticul, we find Mohs and some of the God-Generals. With the world leaving the Score, Mohs is getting desperate to keep the Score on track, so he gets the God-Generals to use a fonic arte that gives him the power of the seventh fonon. However, since he’s not a seventh fonist, the arte mutates his body and warps his mind. The God-Generals knew this would happen and are just playing Mohs for their own ends. After they leave, our heroes head to the king and ask about the locket (without Natalia present, of course). All evidence points to Largo being the father, but they still need to confirm this with Natalia’s nurse, who’s in Chessedonia, so our heroes make up some B.S. about the fake Score reader being there to keep Natalia in the dark and head off. However, when the team arrives, they see that the fake Score reader actually is there, and it’s Sync. They try to convince everyone not to trust him by mentioning that the Order of Lorelei has forbidden Score readings, but they don’t mention that he’s only pretending to do this in order to get people’s replica data and that his actions have killed people, and the people end up siding with Sync. Why they don’t mention this, I have no idea; I can’t help but think that quite a few of this game’s conflicts could be prevented if everyone was just honest with each other from the start (I’ve never understood that “I was only lying to protect you!” excuse, especially since it only ever seems to be used to justify unnecessary conflict in fiction. Show me someone cause a disaster by being honest with friends and family! You can’t because it never happens!). Anyway, since Sync is a replica of Ion, he looks like him and can mimmick his voice, and he does exactly this to play with Anise’s emotions and make his escape. Our heroes use the opportunity from this diversion to split off from Natalia again by having her stay behind and comfort Anise so the rest of them can get back to what really matters. The maid mentions that the name of Natalia’s birth father was Badaq, and his physical description is awfully similar to Largo’s appearance.

Around this time, we learn that the God-Generals and Mohs are forming a “New Order of Lorelei,” and if any nation doesn’t agree to go back to the Score, it will be considered as an act of war, so after the group gets back together, they head to Yulia City to let them know about the New Order. There, they learn that there’s something moving across the ocean absorbing seventh fonons, the material that creates replicas. After finding it, we discover that it’s the Isle of Feres, the place Hod used to be. This place has a gimmick where, at one point, you have to break the floor to fall down and proceed, but as you can imagine, you won’t be able to go back up. One of the walkthroughs I found claims that there’s a ladder somewhere to help you go back, but I couldn’t find it, probably due to the game’s unnecessarily dark palette for this area. The save point at the end is one where you can use a wing bottle to return to the dungeon’s entrance, but there’s no wing bottle after the “destroying the floor” part; it’s way back at the beginning of the dungeon in an optional split path. All of this made me think it was possible to get stuck here (luckily for me, I had a previous save that from before I destroyed the ground, so I could go back and get the wing bottle). As for the story that happens here, we find Arietta protecting a replicator, and we learn that Arietta’s birth parents were also killed in Hod back when she was a baby, and the Liger Queen raised her from then on. Since it isn’t time for her duel with Anise, she leaves, and we find that there are a ton of replicas here (they have voice acting, but it’s all monotone). Apparently, they were told that they’d be given a life on the “new Hod,” Eldrant (which is a replica of Hod floating in the sky). Our heroes know that the replicas are being tricked, but even when the replicas see that Mohs and the God-Generals are proceeding with their plans without them, they still believe those lies and head off to the Tower of Rem.

After getting out of the Isle of Feres, our heroes head to Grand Chokmah to discuss how to get into Eldrant. It’s being protected by the planet storm, so they’ll have to command the Absorption Gate and Radiation Gate to stop it. However, before they depart, Largo shows up and lets them know that he finally figured out where the duel will be held: Cheagle Woods, where the Liger Queen was killed. Luckily, you don’t have to retraverse this dungeon since a cut-scene at the entrance teleports you to the end. Also, despite being called a duel, it isn’t a 1v1, but rather a complete recycle of the previous Arietta boss fight. However, unlike last time, Arietta is killed. Anise starts to mourn Arietta even though she hated her guts, but Largo tells her to stop because that somehow insults the ideals she died for (I don’t get it). We also find out that Van totally wasn’t being manipulative by lying to Arietta about Ion’s state of living because, according to Largo, if she knew the original Ion was dead, she would’ve killed herself, and this was Van’s way of saving her life. I admit I don’t know how suicidal people think, but what about the Liger Queen? She was still alive back then, and as Arietta’s adopted mother, she could comfort her child in times of loss and hardship, possibly even helping to convince Arietta not to take her own life; that’s what family is for, after all. Even if we assume that Arietta wouldn’t make it home before then, Van could gather her friends and family like he’s staging an intervention before breaking the news and letting her know that she still has people and ligers who care about her. My point is I don’t buy Largo’s rationalization for Van’s actions. Anyway, before Largo leaves, Luke calls him Badaq and tosses the pendant at him, and we’re informed that that name died a long time ago.

After wandering around a bit, our heroes end up back in Baticul. Replicas are swarming everywhere and the originals are freaking out at seeing people who look exactly like formerly deceased friends and family. Yulia City has agreed to take in replicas as refugees, but the replicas still want to go to the Tower of Rem. Also, Asch contacts Luke through their telepathy and they agree to meet in the manor, but this is a trap by Luke to force Asch to confront his real parents. After a brief scene showing Asch meet with his parents, catching up on the events that have happened, the game cuts to the party discussing how to get rid of the miasma. Luke is seriously considering the idea Jade mentioned about killing ten thousand seventh fonists, as well as himself, to get rid of the miasma (Luke still has that emo complex about being someone else’s replica), and all the rest of the team is trying to convince him how dumb this plan is. Suddenly, Asch shows up by the door and adds his own comments about how that plan is stupid and that Luke shouldn’t do it before storming off to do the very thing he just told Luke not to do. The only difference is that Jade realizes Asch plans on using the replicas at the Tower of Rem as replacements for the seventh fonists since, as mentioned previously, replicas are made using the seventh fonon. Luke decides they all have to stop Asch from killing himself to destroy the miasma, completely missing all of the irony in the process.

As I climbed the tower, I fully expected there to be a reveal that Asch had a better plan the whole time and our heroes had just erroneously assumed he was gonna do the same thing Luke had planned on doing. Perhaps the team would reach the top of the tower and see another replica of Asch create the necessary hyperresonance, and when the miasma disappears, Asch would come out and say something like “Hey, replica, you know all that emotion you felt when you thought I was going to kill myself? That’s the emotion all of your friends felt when you said the same thing. Now don’t do anything stupid like that again. I’m off to look for the Jewel of Lorelei.” But no, Asch really is set on killing himself to neutralize the miasma. Yeesh, he’s even worse at noticing the irony than Luke is. I can’t help but think that this goes beyond character flaws and into the territory of lazy writing. This game has clever ideas; was this another MGSV scenario where the head writer left the company midway through development and everyone had to scramble to tie up all the unfinished plot threads? Regardless, after a brief interruption from Dist that leads to his death, our heroes make it to the top of the tower where we find out that Asch left his car keys at Daath or whatever the developers’ excuse was for postponing this event and he leaves. Luke is still indecisive about making the commitment to kill himself, so they decide to go to Daath as well. I feel like this game is trying to pad itself out sometimes (I know this post is so huge that I’d get the award for longest on-topic BLAEO post if said awards existed, but trust me, I left out quite a few unnecessary details from this game’s story). Anyway, at Daath, we see both King Ingobert and Emperor Peony are there, as well as a representative of the Order of Lorelei. This is how they find out about Luke’s plan to eliminate the miasma via mass suicide, and while they’re surprised, they know it’s a hard decision and will support Luke either way. After this, you can talk to your party members, each one triggering a scene showing how they feel about Luke’s plan, but save Tear for last since her cut-scene triggers the plot to move forward, leading to a scene where Asch threatens to kill Luke if he tries to commit suicide. It reminds me of that time I was suspended from school for cutting class (well, it was actually a pep rally, but apparently those count, too). Anyway, now it’s back to the tower where we finally get to see these events go down. Even though the replicas had been mistreated by the originals, they are willing to give their lives since Asch had promised them that there would be a safe haven for replicas in the new world. Asch is about to start the ritual, but Luke pushes him out of the way and starts it himself, and as Luke begins using his powers to neutralize the miasma, we find out that the Jewel of Lorelei was inside him the whole time. No, really: Luke had absorbed the jewel into his own body, and the jewel’s power is interfering with the ritual, so Asch has to step in and help him out with it. Together, Luke and Asch are able to neutralize the miasma without either of them dying in the process (all the replicas in the tower die, though, but nobody cares about them). With that, the world is saved from the slowest threat in the universe and its palette is back to normal, which means we can finally see where we’re going again.

Even with that out of the way, we still have some more game left. Jade comments on how Luke really should’ve died back there, so our heroes head to Belkend so Luke can get a medical examination. The doctor tells Luke that his fonons are separating and he could die at any moment, and when everyone asks Luke what the doctor said, he lies and says he’s fine because nobody learns anything in this game (except maybe that unicorn from earlier). In Baticul, we see that the New Order finally sent out emissaries; Largo is the one for Kimlaska-Lanvaldear, and he asks the king to go back to the Score, but the king refuses, so the New Order takes this as an act of war. Upon witnessing this event, our heroes remember that the New Order exists and is a threat, so they decide to head off to the Absorption Gate and Radiation Gate to deactivate the planet storm and enter Eldrant. Before they leave Baticul, though, King Ingobert finally works up the courage to tell Natalia that her father is Largo. Natalia runs off to confront Largo about this, and as our heroes catch up, we learn Largo’s backstory: the Score had told them they needed to have a child, but said child was Natalia who was taken from them and used to replace the king’s deceased child. This traumatized Largo’s wife so much, she committed suicide, and similar to Van, Largo blames the Score for these events. Largo leaves, and now it’s off to the Absorption Gate. Of course, the Absorption Gate is another recycled dungeon, except now we fight Largo at the end of the dungeon. After defeating him, a cut-scene shows him threatening to knock Luke off the edge of the arena, but Natalia shoots him in the back with an arrow, showing that she finally overcame all that family drama stuff, and Largo dies. Luke uses the Jewel of Lorelei to remove the fonic symbol on this side of the world and it’s off to the Radiation Gate–oh wait, we gotta take this new replica of Ion to Daath. Now it’s off to the Radiation Gate. This place is rather short, and my main issue with it is that the path forward is both transparent and being partly blocked by a foreground path; I looked up a walkthrough only to see no mention of what I needed to do, as if it should’ve been obvious, until I finally saw that extra path. Anyway, this fonic symbol is being guarded by none other than Mohs. Our heroes see that he’s suffering a lot due to the whole monster mutation and all, so they come to the decision to put him down.

Now, it’s finally time to head to Eldrant. With the game almost over, the remaining God-Generals will naturally show up to try to stop you. First up is Legretta, and so far, everyone has had very detailed and tragic backstories to explain how they got to where they are, so why is Legretta helping Van? She’s in love with him. sigh…I don’t think I need to explain my issues with this one. After killing her, Tear is sad since Legretta was her military instructor, but Tear won’t let herself show emotion because that’s part of what Legretta taught her (and keeping up with her training is Tear’s way of honoring Legretta’s memory). After heading forward for a bit, Luke (and only Luke) falls into a trap and ends up in a room with Asch. Turns out it’s one of those RPG puzzle rooms where the switch only opens the door while it’s being pressed, and leaving the switch closes the door. He challenges Luke to a battle to decide who gets to move forward and stop Van’s plan, triggering a 1v1 battle against Asch. When you win, he gives you the Sword of Lorelei and tells you to go ahead while you hear Oracle Knights coming from the other direction to try to stop you. After rejoining everyone and moving further into Eldrant, you encounter Sync, who still believes that he is nothing without Van’s replica world. When you kill him, it’s Anise’s turn to grieve, although she mostly just calls Sync an idiot. Not long before you make it to the end, a cut-scene shows all the Oracle Knights that Asch killed before showing Asch fighting the rest of them off, but then it shows a few of them getting hits in. As more and more swords get stored inside Asch’s body like a pin cushion, he starts to die, and we see his essence flow to Luke, conveniently triggering a “second order” hyperresonance that undoes the trap the group haplessly walked into (I think this also fixes that whole “fonons separating; will die” thing from earlier; it isn’t made clear).

Now, it’s time for the final battle against Van. Yeah, remember when Lorelei said that “one who is trying to seize glory” tried to take his power? Guess what ancient ispanian word means “one who is trying to seize glory.” Yup, he was talking about Van. When they meet, Van explains that the Score is just the planet’s memory converted into human language, and even if people aren’t knowingly following the score, he believes that they’ll still end up following it because the planet itself knows what will happen and will make it happen, so the only way to prevent this is to destroy the world and make a new one. However our heroes explain that they believe the Score is merely one of many possible futures, and humanity can choose their own paths in spite of the planet’s memory. Van responds by saying that they’re just arguing over what they believe to be true (one of the few times I’ve seen that line said in fiction and actually found it to be applicable to the situation), and the only way to settle this is by fighting each other. The battle begins, our heroes trading blows with Van, but not long into the battle, another cut-scene happens explaining that Tear can use fonic hymns to separate Lorelei and his power from Van, but this gets interrupted by the battle resuming. This battle lasts longer and includes some overly powerful attacks considering the player can’t or can barely avoid them, and eventually, another cut-scene triggers, showing Luke shatter Van’s armor. Van realizes that he’s about to lose, so he uses all of Lorelei’s power to take a new form: basically the same model but with purple skin. However, all of the characters shout about how they will not lose, and another battle occurs, featuring similar ridiculous attacks as the previous battle. If you make it past this one as well, another cut-scene shows Tear finally getting around to singing that fonic hymn to separate Van from Lorelei, and while you wait for her to finish, you get to play around with a similar battle setup as the one you just beat, except the UI for your health is gone and you can’t die (at least, I didn’t die; I did hear Luke say his “I’m low on health” voice clip, though). The fight ends with the game auto-triggering one of Luke’s event combos, and we get the epilogue. It turns out the fonic hymn Tear used to help our heroes win was a lullaby that Van used to sing to her when she was young (remember they’re siblings), so Tear and Van share their goodbyes as Van dies for real this time. Lorelei, now free, comments on how he’s surprised to see that the future he predicted in the Score didn’t come true, and he thanks our heroes and goes off on his own. Suddenly, Eldrant begins to collapse without Lorelei’s power to keep it airborne, so Luke decides to stay behind and use his power to buy everyone else some time. The rest of our heroes escape and the credits roll, but there’s one last scene showing our heroes waiting in Tataroo Valley for Luke’s return, but he doesn’t seem to be showing up. Jade comments on how it’s getting late and that they should all probably go home since it gets dangerous at night, but then a figure appears in the distance: it’s Luke. Tear embraces him and everyone is reunited and happy. THE END.

So, what do I think of the game’s story overall? Well, there are some moments that I really liked as well as other moments that seemingly only happened to drag the game out a bit longer, but for the most part, it’s a serviceable story. If this were an anime or TV show, I might have been able to recommend it, but we can’t forget that it’s attached to a game that’s mostly dull and kinda unfair, and it isn’t worth going through that game-play to experience the game’s story.

P.S. This is my first time trying to review a story, so if anyone has feedback, I’m willing to hear it. All I ask is that you provide examples of how I could rewrite the review to be better; don’t just say things like “it’s too long” and expect me to be able to change my actions from it. Besides, I never liked reviews that merely state their opinions and only their opinions like they’re facts and expect me to take them at face value without any concrete explanations or examples; blind faith in those types of reviews are what lead to me playing boring games like this one.