Last time, the most important character in the game. Today, five updates in and we’re just now starting the actual plot of the chapter because Tez makes me write too many words. I am a good reviewer.

The first quest is nothing special, just an escort quest with special shiny portrait man and his faceless deaf mother whose existence serves no purpose, just like another fih’jik woman we know who I’m pretty sure uses the exact same sprite, because women are scenery in this game.

They have to visit their family shrine because fih’jiks’ hat is “religious” but the desert’s infested with monsters because RPG and Dehl offers to do it without pay because Dehl. At least this time they have the excuse that Mahk’s feeding them (probably). The artisan is confused by this “guild” business because Do’Ssha’s isolationist, and for some reason Lani exposits about it in detail even though this is the end of the game and there’s no real point. The whole scene is really clunky and full of padding.

Weso: “…your manner of speaking is insufferable. I hardly gleaned a word of that. […] T’is a dark day that a Shra can speak the Human tongue better than one of us.”

Also he’s a jerk to Lani because she’s gotten a free ride for too long I guess. Perhaps Bit Character had to step up to fulfill the dickishness quota since Qualstio’s absent today. Actually, that last line is an incredibly backhanded compliment to Dehl too in addition to being hella racist, even though we were just told fih’jik weren’t racist. Are we doing the Insurgent thing where we’re jumping between parallel universes now? Perhaps in this timeline the repentance stopped at the slavery thing and the fih’jik never went all the way in giving shra special status. Combined with short lifespans, there are now plenty of fih’jik who know the Blue Plague only as mere history, making them perfectly willing to buy into the foreign propaganda that shra are inferior, threatening to destroy the one foothold to acceptance shra seemed to have. Hey, now that I think about it, I actually like this AU, it gives Skint more motivation and desperation.

…And why are they even speaking Human in the fih’jik capital to begin with? It occurs to me that the game never does the bracketed translated text thing, which is probably why all the important stuff is in Human even when that doesn’t always make sense. I can sort of understand the sentiment (the technique is a little jarring), except it makes no sense for Human to be English so that must be translated for our benefit as well. The game is perfectly willing to make up fantasy language conversations as a cool gimmick but won’t actually use them when it makes sense for the plot, which I think is wasted potential.

We’re not off to a good start, is my point.

Gameplay-wise the quest is lackluster. The gimmick is that you’re limited to four characters because two have to bodyguard the squishy civilians constantly, but the monsters are pathetically easy so eh. I drop Santes and Sirush because I rely on them too much.

Why is everyone in this game a jerk? What is he even doing here, if this is outside his jurisdiction? Does he just sit here in his free time to smarm at people?

I don’t think the size matters, though. The Supreme One loves all Her children the same.”

The only interesting part of this quest. A pity the concept is never followed up on; depicting greed and decadence in a pious society and the rationalizations that arise from that could have led to some pretty interesting social commentary, and would have made Do’Ssha more flawed and complex. Instead this is just sort of…here.

God’s first brush with combat happens here. I’ll admit that this attack is pretty powerful, but while other characters’ grow in power over time, his is static unless I blow a caster turn on generating enchanted squares, which I am not doing.

Alito: “My friends, it seems we’ve reached Rank 26. I have never felt so proud, I say!”

And there are no special objectives, even though Weso whines about how much he hates one of the enemy types so you’d think there’d be a bonus for avoiding them. It’s strange, normally the introduction quests are at least somewhat special. Even the very first one had special objectives and a fun layout. It’s like “The Encounter” sucked out the developer’s soul or something.

Afterwards Dehl tries to prod Yfus and Ques into talking about their shrines, but since they’ve severed all ties to Do’Ssha it doesn’t go over well.

Oh look, it’s a female character! Guess how long she’s going to survive. She’s Ques’ sister. Turns out he’s been using a pseudonym and his real name is Seku Muezza, which on the one hand was foreshadowed by “Ques” not being two syllables, but on the other hand why did he pick an obviously fake name. (Unless I’m totally off-base and it’s pronounced “kyuu-ess” instead of “kwess” but that sounds incredibly unnatural to me.) She chews him out for leaving his home because OH WHOOPS IT’S CRYPTIC TIME NO EXPLANATION FOR YOU

Ques: “I am glad to have seen you at least once, Syri. Stay alive.”

…That probably didn’t sound nearly as awful in the original draft where Syri had a different fate.

Anyway, he blows her off and

Yfus: (“Muezza, huh? An interesting turn, indeed.”)

AUGH

More lazy, tacky thought bubbles. This adds nothing, it’s just more “look at me, I’m so ~~mysterious~~!” All it tells us is that the Muezza name is significant, which the game will tell us anyway with the bonus of some actual explanation shortly, and Syri’s dialogue sort of hints that they’re important already. This is just jarring and pointless and strips the sequence of any potential subtlety.

Syri: “Seku! What will you do once Do’Ssha falls?”
Dehl: “What did you say?”
Syri: “…Mmmph!”

Then we end with more ~cryptic~, because we need to stretch this out as long as possible. She says this after Ques leaves, by the way, so there is absolutely no in-universe reason for her to say it, it’s just there.

What the game seems to be going for here is similar to what it did last chapter with Yacatec – the first quest introduces us to an important character, then the next one explains their motives and gives us the plot hook. The problem is that the situation is too different here. It made sense for Yacatec to take things slow and delay the reveal, but here the plot has to bend over backwards to prevent Syri from spilling the beans immediately. Because Syri is more of a plot device than a character there’s not much else to fill the void with, so the scene is just cryptic plot teasing devoid of substance. Either the plot stuff should have been moved to this cutscene to expedite things or Syri and Ques should have gotten more development to provide foundation for a plotless scene. A long-lost sibling reunion, especially of an important family with high stakes, is a perfectly good subject for a scene, but the game doesn’t seem to even consider going in that direction. It’s all business, yet it spreads the plot too thin for that to work either.

The second quest is slightly more interesting. I have to recall some mercenaries who have been lost in the desert, but they’re so spread out that everyone needs to split up because the developer made a multi-group system and by God you will use it. You’re encouraged to avoid encounters since everyone is alone and vulnerable, but none of the monsters are really threatening so you can also hack your way through the desert if you like. Also, for once there’s actually a penalty for failure, as a defeated party member is permanently locked out of exploring their area. I play along and try to be stealthy, though there are a few required encounters if you want to get everyone.

There’s so much flavor text here, though! Each of the workers not only has a unique spiel when you first encounter them but additional lines back at the base camp after they’re rescued. You can also ask questions about the operation, and party members even have unique dialogue if you talk to them in the camp! For such a minor quest, there’s an admirable amount of detail put into it. It seems the developer got re-energized.

There is this, though:

Remember when fih’jik didn’t know what guilds were? Neither does the game!

Falitza is also perfectly capable of acting autonomously, and no one comments on this. Everything would just make so much more sense if her twist was revealed earlier.

Alito: “As you may know, no other guild has reached Rank 27 since the induction of the RGRF.”

what

I guess this can be explained by the organization being very recent, but it’s still pretty sueish. 27 is also a rather weird milestone when you can keep going for 3 more ranks.

“As the first to earn such prestige, I insist that, for today, we celebrate!”

Unfortunately they can’t because Dehl repeatedly tanked their finances no actually they can. More exp for me.

And now we get to see the scene that should have happened last quest. Ques tells her to shut up and leave them alone, but Dehl presses. She drops the drama bomb that Kir’Ssha’s army is on the move, except we already knew that before the chapter even started so it falls pretty flat. The only way this could really work is if we were led to believe that Tocita really was just paranoid and there would be no attack. It’d still be an obvious fakeout, but at least it’d be something.

Syri: “Do I have your interest now? Come find me in the city when you’re ready for more.”

Then she leaves. That’s literally it. The game actually took one scene’s worth of information and split it into three scenes. Admittedly stuff will finally happen next quest, but gods, this is just such shameless padding. In the early game we just didn’t get cutscenes after quests if the game had nothing to say and that would have been fine here, but now it’s as if the game feels obligated to throw plot scenes at us constantly even if it doesn’t have enough material for it.

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