Gametalk 1: Luminous Arc 2 and Fate/Extra

It will not be often I talk about games, but you people like pictures, and these games have very nice ones.

So if you listened to me or have followed the Author’s Corner (which I highly doubt) you would have known that I bought some, fanservicey JRPG games. I bought Luminous Arc 2 and Fate/Extra. Allow me to talk about them for a while, while giving everyone their pictures :D. I apologize firsthand for not being able to post seriously on friday and saturday. Friday was me literally playing said games (and a few others) while saturday I worked for the Salvation Army (which you would have known if you read the Author’s Corner :p ). I guess you could consider this a review, but at the moment, I haven’t finished either of the games, so just my quick thoughts

Luminous Arc 2 is grid-based, turn-based, JRPG. It’s like Final Fantasy Tactics and a visual novel all in one. The story goes on in this world where there are magic users and outright brawlers. Magic is an everyday thing thanks to the work of the witches who created things called Lapises that allow temporary magic usage (in terms of turning lights on, heating shit up, etc).  The story goes as 3 warriors in training, Roland our regular knight, Rasche the older brother, and Rina the archer (I just noticed their names all start with R’s) who decide to go see some fireworks on the local festival, only to find a girl crash down on our hapless main character. Then they get mixed into trouble inside a labratory against some golems and a strange cat monster (it’s a fantasy rpg, cut it some slack). The girl allies with the 3 and they fight off the golems. Then one of the contraptions in the lab gets attached to Roland’s hands. This contraption called the Rune Engine allows Roland, a human knight to attune magical abilties with witches. This leads Roland to be summoned by the land’s queen to quell the monsters known as the Beast Fiends and to stop a strange witch who has been going around causing havoc. The witch that landed on Roland reveals herself as Althea, an aspiring flame witch. The four are assigned to go to the witch academies to gain more help into the beast fiends and the other witch.

To be honest, I think this game deserves an anime, it’s actions scenes could use a little work but I think the characters and their colorful attitudes deserve to be animated and it actually made me chuckle. The colorful cast of characters (theres around like 24 characters?) make it pretty funny adventure. I am pretty confused if I’m supposed to do the Pokemon Effect (basically, keep everyone at the same level) or Play favorites. Anyways, allow me to explain the more “key” characters that make this game resemble a visual novel.

• Roland(middle): Regrettably, he’s the most powerful character. He starts out pretty okay but later turns godly in terms of dealing damage and moving around. Even with such great fighting ability, he’s a complete idiot when it comes to girls. However, he does end up with one girl at the end and since it isn’t a COMPLETE harem, he’s a good “bro” but a failure at understanding girls.
• Althea(top with weather): Althea is the first witch you can use and her element is fire. Corresponding with her nature she’s the rather happy character whose pretty nerdy because she’s still a student. Her character is, okay, she’s the regular girl in the series. In this small “List” I put her in 4th place (list is made of the the characters being explained, excluding Roland) 
• Dia(GLASSES): Dia’s the second witch you can use, her element is light. Dia is the more “upbeat” witch in the group and is said to be the oldest next to Luna and Sadie down the list. Dia’s attitude is basically following her whims  and her snark and attitude makes her one of my favorite characters in the game. She’s Number 2!
• Pop(leftmost): Ah yes, Pop, the loli witch of the element of nature (earth/wood). You meet Pop first and then after you get Luna you get to control her. Pop is pretty stubborn and is a complete loli so I don’t really like her as much. I don’t really spend that much time with her in the conversation moments in the game so not much info. She’s on the very bottom of my list, number 6
• Luna(blue-haired): Luna is technically the third witch you can use and her element is water. Aside from being well endowed, her nature is being extremely clumsy and very calmed down. He has an extreme habit of constantly being thirsty. I just love Luna’s calm attitude and she’s a godly healer. Rank 3
• Sadie(trumpet): Sadie is the 5th witch that joins you, her element is wind. Sadie is wierd in terms of being the “semi” perverted girl in the group. She’s pretty much the oldest witch that you can attune magic with. Sadie is…strange, I don’t really hate her and I don’t really like her either. She’s witty but she’s number 5 on the list.
• Fatima(the one that LITERALLY looks like a witch): Fatima is the final witch you can have on your team and her element is ice. Fatima starts out as your enemy in the game and you fight her around 5-6 times. She doesn’t really like you that much and joins you in the last quarter of the game. Lemme be honest, they TRIED to make Fatima look hot, every other character is nicely dressed (until of course you play enough to get Althea’s other form which is I guess on par with Fatima, but Fatima’s got the chest size) but her dress has literally a line going down on it which basically doesn’t hide anything except her chest. Fatima’s got the loner and icy attitude but thats what makes it so worth it when you melt that cold heart of hers. Of course, Fatima’s number 1, enemy to the best ally.

Luminous Arc 2 dealt with the cliche fantasy story but nevertheless was pretty entertaining but Fate/Extra being from Typemoon kicks up the story and thematics a notch. Fate/Extra deals with once again, the Holy Grail war, only in the highschool-virtual world setting. Basically the world literally got f*cked up and the world is literally in a Matrix like state called Mooncell. Somehow a Holy Grail war is going on in here. Anyways, the game itself is a visual novel. Main gameplay is literally Rock Paper Scissors. You all know the rules right? Rock beats scissor, scissor beats paper, paper beats rock. Well in Extra the rule is Attack beats Break, Break beats Guard, and Guard beats attack. The story of your character is basically a complete noob gets caught up in the Holy Grail war and he/she chooses one of three servants (either a Saber, Archer, or Caster) to enter the Holy Grail War. In this Mooncell world, the rule is that you are given an opponent to face. You are given 6 days to prepare and you can train in this virtual-virtual world known as the Arena. In the Arena are Cipher-key thats allow you to enter the colosseum where you finally face off against the other “masters”. I’ll keep this short with the characters, I only played with Caster and Saber so my thoughts on them (spoilers)

• Saber: Lets compare the Stay Night Saber against this one. The most obvious difference being that SN version has a blue color scheme while Extra version has red, they also look completely alike if it weren’t for the color and outfit. It takes our SN Saber a while to open up to Shirou and she is not so comfortable when discussing her femininity (is that a word?). You could say that SN Saber is somewhat of a stoic due to her knightly background. Extra Saber is COMPLETELY different in our Athurian-Knight Saber. E-Saber is arrogant, snarky, and isn’t really isn’t that shy when talking about herself. So SN Saber is Arthur the good knight while E-Saber is Nero, the Roman Emperor (pretty obvious on how she appreciates art in one of her dialogues and how she calls you Praetor, further obviousness strengthened by mentioning the Domus Aurea). E-Saber is physically shows her pompous attitude by wearing a dress that is basically see thorough. Both are EXTREMELY cute when it comes to romance. Choosing Saber is literally playing on easy mode, she kills anything she wants to very easily.
• Caster: Caster basically acts as your wife. She adores you and and loves you as her master. But she will never allow polygamy and is more than willing to castrate you if you try and cheat on another girl. But of course, if you’re like me, if you choose Caster, then you are playing it FOR Caster’s love (what…just me?). Caster’s playthrough is rather tough as she needs to rely on her magic, but once you raise that stat, she becomes as easy as Saber.

Both of these game are pretty fun, and before we go, PICS!

I WILL have seperate posts for pics on these characters 😀