HALIBABICA'S PROFILE

Continuing my journey through SSS, Zach and co. entered Hahn Nova castle so Iyumei could lead the people in a prayer. She didn't get far into the ceremony before someone showed up to interfere...

Oshea tries to take this legendary sword hilt, and Zach steps in to stop her. She's supposedly a powerful mage, but Zach's lack of anima protects him from her spells, and we beat her down with swords pretty quickly.

Oshea flees the scene and Iyumei finishes the ceremony. Then we met with the marquis of Hahn Nova to talk about what the heck just happened. Gardivere's order to take the hilt was an act of war, and now conflict is inevitable. It seems he wishes to reassemble the sword, presumably to use it in conquest. If we can get the blade first, we'll have the complete thing instead, but there's a problem...

Erin was kidnapped! While we were busy praying and chatting, she was taken away. Chapter 4 begins with the choice of either going to save Erin or searching for the blade, where getting one could mean losing the other. Naturally, I chose to save Erin. She owes Zach money, after all.

However, it's worth noting here that Erin never actually left the party, nor did Oshea leave the castle. Erin is still a member who can fight in the group, and Oshea appears in Hahn Nova's prison, before and after her assault on the prayer. Go figure on that one.

Anyway, our quest took us to the northern continent of...Neufelsomething. The Finney prison of Befestigung is where she's being held, so we head far, far north to get there. Along the way, I bump into some invisible objects on the world map, and I cross a gate in the northeast beyond which nothing exists. I understand this is a demo, and I think I may be nearing its limit, but we still have some content to cover.

After some Zelda-esque stealth work (complete with Ocarina of Time's guard whistle), we find our way to Erin, who has proven she didn't really need our help at all. She knocked out her guard before we even got there, but we accompanied her out of the building after that.

She says she needs to go home to prepare, and asks if we'll join her. Zach says he has other plans, so we leave her to it. Oh, but she's still in the party, though.

With Erin safe and sound, we return to our main quest of finding the blade. Ol' Gragmar is our contact for that information, though he doesn't trust us at first.

It seems my desktop companion Natsuki doesn't trust him, either. We convince him we're not the bad guys and he points us in the right direction. By that, I mean he tells us Gardivere already has the blade. Whether that's because I got Erin first, who can say? Point is he already has half of what he's looking for, and getting it back won't be easy.

We report this discovery to the marquis in Hahn Nova, who informs us that it may be wise to enlist a capable thief. We're told of Garshoul, a notorious criminal who's been prowling around Kynoch lately. We journey back to Zach's sort-of home to see if we can find him. When we get there, it turns out he's already been found. The king has him in prison. He's wary of our request to speak with Garshoul, but he's summoned to the throne room anyway.

And what a guy he is. He agrees to help us on some of his own terms, even though he's the prisoner here. He asks to visit his lady in Night before we depart, and everyone seems okay with that for some reason. I don't know if he's supposed to be a party member because Erin's still keeping the group full by existing in two places at once.

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That's it for progress, but I also found some interesting bugs along the way. I once got stuck with my character facing the same direction for a while (saving and loading fixed it). I also re-initiated the chapter 2 start sequence by sailing to the wrong town and hiring a boat back to Night. Hopefully, that won't happen again now that I'm supposed to be going there...

More SSS! I missed a session this weekend due to life/holiday stuff, and I forgot to report on the one before that. But here we are again...

It seems a lot of stuff has happened since my previous post (and I forgot things because it's been a minute). Zach's next job took him to a tower that was raided. He was joined by a shady guy and a female monk named Erin. When they got to the root of the trouble, it turned out to be a war general who was breaking the peace treaty. We fought him off, but he survived and departed with a warning. Shady guy left like a true shady guy would, but Erin had to pay Zach to stay on task with her against this wicked general. I guess he's really a mercenary at heart after all.

Their quest then took them to the priestess Iyumei who needed protection while traveling through the (literally) shady town of Night. She doubted Zach's credentials, so he and Erin had to go to a broken-down lighthouse to retrieve a treasure and prove their worth. That was no trouble at all, so Iyumei begrudgingly accepted them as her bodyguards.

That was last session. Now that we're caught up, we journeyed to Night and had an interesting time. Things got weird right off the bat, as this was the start of a new chapter and I found a couple ways to break the game. First, through some feat of menu shenanigans in Night, I triggered an invalid common event and crashed the game. Then, when I got back to the chapter 3 intro screen...


oh oh dear oh no what how

You can pause with the custom menu while the text is scrolling, which causes the hero to appear and the moving pictures to vanish. Thankfully, it doesn't mess up the timing of the events, and the scene still ends after its intended duration has passed. Still, that's rather sloppy.

Once we were in Night proper, things continued being weird. The place's geometry is a little baffling, and the run mechanic has some unfortunate interactions with the stairs that are supposed to automatically move you diagonally. I kept accidentally breaking out of the move sequence and gaining the ability to pass through walls. Now's as good a time as any to mention that running will often cause you to bypass teleport spots on the map, so it can be bothersome traveling between areas.


Some regular tile screw-ups occurred as well.

On our way through town, we met general Verstus who is not a treaty-breaking dick, and he agreed to tag along in case that other General Guy showed up again. We wandered to Hahn Nova, Iyumei's destination, and that's where I called it. But before I go, I just wanted to note...


You can enter some buildings from the side, and that can be rather confusing. You don't enter doors by bumping into them; you have to press enter, and it's a little blind when you can't actually see the entrance. There are also times where you'll enter a map from one direction and be facing another when you get to the other side. It's becoming less of an issue, but it sure was jarring at first.

We'll see if I can't keep this up any better, even with Christmas rapidly encroaching. -.-

3-17: Projection of Miss-iles

The rope is one of the best hold items you can find in this game. It boosts the Thief skill, which lets you break into locked chests more easily and increases damage on backstabs. You just can't go wrong with that!

...never mind that neither of those effects make any sense for a rope.

And apparently these image links don't work anymore. That's cool.

The YouTuber Cato Wong did a boss rush video, but he missed some bosses along the way. When I pointed this out, he asked which ones he passed up, and I told him I'd do him one better and make a mode that connects all the bosses together.

And here we are. It's every boss (and mini-boss) in the game, one after another.

Bossedit8 also likes to do boss rushes, so we may get some coverage from him as well. That's all!

No, this is clearly light-resistant carpeting.