ARGH'S PROFILE

Ah, I see, thanks. I hadn't recruited Gunther before (never thought to head to the upper-right for some reason), but now I have. Can't believe I could have had the portable transceiver this whole time, that thing is a lifesaver.

I definitely didn't intend to say anything about matriarchies being inherently evil in this game, and I think that most people aren't going to get that from that quest; she was really just an alternate enemy I could throw in there.

Yeah it's not that big of a deal overall. It's just that making Pagan/Satanist/Generic Evil Cultists matriarchal to hold it up as this evil and unnatural thing is a somewhat common trope, so it did rub me the wrong way a little.

I see where you're coming from about Mag's quest, though. It's optional, so I guess I put the moral dilemma on the player instead of the characters, which kind of makes it okay for me.

Ahah, pulling an Undertale? I suppose I'm guilty as charged. I do have to say that I find the characters way too indifferent about murder in general, though -- I guess it's an unavoidable consequence of a combat-based game, but, for instance, Mint and Cyril having absolutely no reaction to murdering Diego in cold blood really threw me. I expected him to just be knocked out or something PG like that but no, they explicitly murder him and the 12-year-old doesn't even seem to notice. And that's only the second boss!

Also, on the random encounters thing: I've heard of one RPG that let you turn off a dungeon's random encounters once you reached the end of it, so you could still grind if you wanted but it was possible to explore or revisit old areas without having to deal with the monsters once you cleared a dungeon. Does that sound like a good compromise?

author=Housekeeping
Yeah, Switch over in Nexus (the place with the multiple teleporters in Avishun) is Gainer's other mentor.

Huh, really? Could have sworn I talked to her before (I thought she was the technician for the teleporter-looking thing in Sanctuary), but it must have been too early I guess. Edit: Ooh, yeah, she still just gives her generic message about being amazed the inactive teleporter goes to the surface. I think she might be bugged.

There's an item that can turn off random encounters, but it's available after beating the game. I've been debating whether or not to make it available at the start of the game and boosting enemy xp/gold/drop rates, but I'm afraid of what that would do to the balance.

Nuts. Guess I'll leave some stuff for NG+ then. Griff's treasure-sniffing is enticing, but I really do not fancy combing through early dungeons for missed chests without a way to avoid random encounters. (And as much as I hate to say it, that might actually be a bad idea, since it would just mean you'd have to do tons of grinding at the heal point before every boss. I've found it's really hard to gauge how prepared you are for the boss by how well you do on the normal mobs, too, so you wouldn't even know when you were done. Increasing exp would cut down on overall grinding time though, so maybe...)

Oh, and a random thought that's been bugging me: why do the silent lake cultists have a matriarch when they worship a male god directly opposed to a female one? Shouldn't they be patriarchal? (Giving the Satanists a matriarch also carries a whiff of matriarchy = evil, which I'm not sure if you intended.) In all honesty, that whole sidequest is pretty...awkward. The cultists are nothing but generous to the heroes in the main story, but all it takes is an offer of power from a creepy squatter and suddenly it's murder time? What the heck, heroes.

There's a Very Special Message about depression that was a little ham-handed but honestly, it was spot-on and it's not a message that gets out there very often so more power to it.

You thought it was hamhanded? I thought it was very well-integrated and made perfect sense as tutorial exposition. When you said this I was expecting a long spiel about depression at the climax or something but it was really pretty minor.

I felt the same way about the debate battles. They never felt terribly interactive and I just felt like I was moving along a scripted path, especially the final one. I don't think I used any evidence except the newspaper, even. Still, interesting concept.

(Thanks for reviewing this, by the way! I doubt I'd have come across it otherwise, and it is a worthwhile thing to pass around.)

When I try to open the game, I can see the start menu fine, but when I try to actually start the game I get this:

Script 'Cache' line 106:RGSSError occurred.

failed to create bitmap

And then it crashes.

I moved the folder around on flash drives for a little while before I actually started, so possibly it's just corrupted, but...does anyone else have this issue?

Edit: Okay yeah I redownloaded it and it works fine. Never mind then, just some file corruption on my end.

There is the ending choice, though. In that regard the oneshot thing does force you to live with the consequences of your actions.

Though I do feel like it would have been clever if the game just autosaved and exiting didn't actually do anything. That keeps the "will you kick the puppy?" aspect without being overly punishing.