I have to think about this one carefully... (Radiant Historia)

Time travel, dysfunctional royalty, and obnoxiously huge spiders. I love this game WAY TOO MUCH, can talk about it for hours, and wrote >20% of the fic on AO3.

SO. Who else has played it? Thoughts? Feelings? Did you get the bad end where the world ends if you choose the wrong person to watch the fire? Do you love the dysfunctional royalty as much as I do? (This is a trick question, nobody loves a certain dead prince as much as I do) How much do you hate the giant spiders? Did you cry during AH Chapter 2? :::DDD

 

as soon as i get a handle on school stuff, i want to go back to RH and try to get past the point i got stuck at. i will probably bug you a lot about it as soon as that happens.

 

I love people bugging me about RH, please do! :::DDD

 

I have nothing constructive to add to this post, but I invite people to bug me weekly starting October 3 to get my damn fanfic updated.

 

Which one? Both of them? Because barring further instructions I will bug you about both of them. :::PPP

 

I just started playing due to the endless recommendations - and in fact found out I'd already downloaded the ROM at some point. Go figure. Anyway, I think I'm just getting to the end of the prologue - Stocke (what a name) has to decide who he's going to work for. I'm already experiencing decision paralysis! :'D

Spoiler: I had to screencap this bit

Cacophonous deluge? You know someone's a douchebag when they use purple prose to describe a fucking rainstorm during talk about military strategy.

 

For what it's worth, you end up taking both options on that one anyway. I recommend joining Rosch first because the enemies in that timeline are easier.

Re: Cacophonous deluge: I am 90% sure that in Japanese Dias talked in a way that's really formal or old-fashioned and that's why they gave him awkward purple prose.

 

End result: He comes across as a bit of a twit. For a little while there I was thinking he was going to be another Lukan the Witless, but I was disappointed on that front.

 

Given some of his life choices later in the game, "a bit of a twit" doesn't seem like an entirely inaccurate assessment. :::PPP

 

I can't wait to find out :D

I'm finding myself liking Stocke - he doesn't come across as 'too stoic and cool for you', but more like 'clinically depressed'. Even his portrait looks gently disappointed with everything.

Spoiler: Meanwhile...

I ship it.

 

Yeah, that's. Not at all a hard conclusion to come to, especially after a couple of endgame revelations. Doubly so because there's a line in the beginning that's never followed up on that implies he's been the only survivor on at least one mission before this. There's a reason I love torturing him in fics/headcanon so much.

Welcome to the most criminally under-written ship in the game, enjoy your stay. :::PPP (One of the fics I'm supposed to bug Quicksilver about is for that ship.)

 

Your first impression of Dias is honestly one of the best summaries of him I've seen. :'D

And I am similarly excited to Tez to see your thoughts as you play! Especially considering your first reaction to Stocke is similar to what my own was...

 

I'm still proud of "*walking shampoo commercial *throws tantrums when they don't get what they want *wine-drunk at 11 AM on a Tuesday" from the Tag Yourself discussion. :::PPP

 

A few hours later: Wow, I am really into this game. Only stopping because I have to be up at a reasonable hour tomorrow.

Spoiler: Some more reactions

Instead of going through with infiltrating the land of evil sand people (I'm sorry but the name of it has completely escaped me rn) I skipped back to the alternate timeline and cleared the mine, where I learned more about Raynie and Marco's tragic past. Kiel is making me suspicious with his eager new recruit act. I suppose he could genuinely be that keen, but...

Raynie toes the line of being tsundere enough to be obnoxious. I mostly like her. Marco I don't know what to think about. Is he even human under all that armor, or is he secretly a small cute dog with those black button eyes? He also needs to give Raynie more credit for what she saw in that mine attack that cost them their merc troop - 'no intelligent creature would cause a cave in that would kill them' my ass, dude, the term 'suicide mission' exists for a REASON. Geez.

Dias and what was it, Selvan? Gross and creepy. Protea is gross and creepy too (goes to services to stare at the choir boys??? D: D: D:), but apparently also dumb as a brick to not realize she's being played. Also I'm kind of snickering that they kept calling her 'wench' in a way that you know the writers meant 'bitch' but they didn't want to up the rating just because of a cuss.

 

I've made jokes about Marco being part Espurr.

Yeah, they're all terrible and deserve each other. :::PPP (Protea is the most terrible and Selvan gets some points back for having the single best line in the game, but.) Oddly enough, there is some swearing that gets through just fine- "pain in the ass" and "bastard" both go uncensored.

 

In my experience, "ass" and "bastard" are both fine in T-rated games, but "bitch" doesn't seem to be--the closest I can remember ever seeing is TWEWY getting away with "quit bitching" at one point (and "would you stop your bi--" earlier). Then again, I've also seen T-rated games dance hilariously around "bastard", and I once saw one get away with "you were nothing but [character]'s whore", which honestly surprised me, so who knows what the ESRB's standards look like.

--wait, Radiant Historia was E10+. Geez, I always forget that. I almost would have expected those to be censored too, then, yeah. :o Okay then, ESRB.

#hi I'm keltena and I'm way too fascinated by ratings standards and how they differ between subjects and mediums and so on #(I mean. aside from the obvious "by being arbitrarily decided by a private group of people" one wrt movies) #e.g. did you know what one thing all of the non-M-rated Shin Megami Tensei games have in common

 

Yeah, it's genuinely bizarre. I like to put it next to Suikoden Tierkreis in my game collection so I can laugh because same genre, same platform, same rating, and yet Tierkreis has an angry mob shouting "darn" and "heck" and RH has the MC call the Big Bad a bastard.

 

Here you go. (Chapters 1 and 2, which are currently the only ones posted, are set pregame and contain no spoilers. Minor spoiler in first author's note regarding sidequests and shipping.)

 

*runs in* PROTECT LION BOYFRIEND AT ALL COSTS >:O *runs out waving sword and yelling*

 

Oooh, yay, I'm glad you're enjoying the game!

Rosch is the best lion boyfriend <3