Episode 195: Tales of Symphonia - GG Sh1tt3rs

[00:00:15] Hello and welcome to Gaming Together, a cooperative podcast. Each pod we play through a cooperative experience to relay to you, the listener, if this game is the creme de la creme of co-op or something better off playing solo. I'm your host, Nave, and my co-op partner this week joining me is Hannah from Baca Bitches. How are you doing, Hannah? Hannah Bateson- I'm doing wonderful now that I'm here on a whole new podcast to totally ruin. Is this your first time guesting on another show?

[00:00:40] Hannah Bateson- Yeah, actually. Officially for a podcast, yeah, this is the first. Hannah Bateson- I don't mean to cut you off, but did you notice I did that intro with my eyes closed? I did that from memory. That was fucking sick, wasn't it? Hannah Bateson- I'm so impressed. Hannah Bateson- You probably couldn't tell. Listeners can't tell, because they're dumb. They can't see me. But yeah, that was crazy. It was from memory. Phillip, I'm gonna need a gold star, a gold cookie. You probably couldn't tell though because Zencaster's camera quality

[00:01:09] goes super into the shitter the moment you start recording, but whatever. Hannah Bateson- It's fine. It works. Hannah Bateson- You wanna talk about your show, Baca Bitches? Give everyone a pitch. Hannah Bateson- Absolutely. So it's me and my friend Stephanie, and we basically drink a whole bunch and we talk about anime together. Specifically, we go through an anime, an episode at a time. So we watch it, we drink a lot while doing so, and then we record our thoughts, opinions,

[00:01:38] and kind of explain what happens in the episode. And right now, currently, we are- well, you guys are going through Inuyasha with us, but we are recording a new show. We're watching a new anime, and it's called How Heavy Are the Dumbbells You Lift? And it's a pretty fun time. It's literally about exercising, and it's- it's choice.

[00:02:07] It's a gay man anime. I know it. I know what show that is. Actually, it's full of fan service of girls. It's fine. But- That's the throw everyone off the scent. Oh, okay. My bad. My bad. The true masculine connections we all share in the- I mean, to be fair, there are some very buff men making appearances. So, it's for everyone, truly. It's all-inclusive anime. Very much so.

[00:02:35] For the all-inclusive show, Baca Bitches. You know my favorite thing about your show is that you guys have like a really long disclaimer at the beginning of the show, where you're like, hey, we're gonna say bad words. And I'm like, I know, the show is called Baca Bitches. Listen, some people aren't expecting that. So, we still have to disclaim that our topics are gonna be a little rough for some listeners? For some listeners. Maybe. Yeah.

[00:03:04] It'll be right at home with our show. The jarring juxtaposition between intense, in-depth video game coverage, and then me ranting about 9-11. Oh, boy. We go into the conspiracies, huh? I just think they're so funny. They're just so good. Fair. All right. So, here at Gaming Together, we like to talk about playing games with your best friends and family. And we like to ask our first-time guests about a significant co-op memory that they'd like to share. It could be like a whole game, like Left 4 Dead, or

[00:03:33] like Halo 3, something crazy that happens during quality zombies. Or you could talk about playing a single-player game with your uncle, passing the controller, passing a doobie, you know, whatever you've got. All right. All right. The thing that I can remember immediately off the top of my head is back in high school, when I was just a young, naive little thing,

[00:03:58] some high school friends of mine, their birthday was in the summer, and they were fraternal twins. And so, they'd have a huge party with like a ton of people over. It's like a frat party. Basically, but it was. It was a frat party. Sorry about that.

[00:04:18] No, I love it. I love the joke. So, we would, like, there'd be 20 to 30 of us hanging out for their birthday, doing a huge party. There'd be food, and there'd be always like a video game competition going on of some sort. And I, at that time, years ago, I brought my PlayStation 2

[00:04:44] with the newest Soul Calibur on it. And I'm like, okay, you guys, enough with, um, I think they were doing like a lot of race car, like. Grand Trismo. Yeah, yeah. Stuff like that. And I was like, no, we should, we should play this one. And it was a hit. It was like, we almost did the whole competition tier thing to see, like, who would come out as a champion. Like a tournament bracket? Yeah. With the poster board, the white dry erase board.

[00:05:14] Basically, yeah. And it was just like, okay, you're done. Next up. Uh, yeah, no, it was, it was intense. It was great. Who are you maining? You maining Kilik? You maining Yoshibitsu? How did you know? Yeah, yeah, back then it was Kilik, uh, mainly because he is also a palindrome. So, there was that connection. Um, and I would also play with Cassandra as well.

[00:05:39] Cassandra is pretty, I mean, is Cassandra's the one with the sister that's like the same, has the same weapon, right? Yeah. Yeah. They're both from Greece or whatever. I remember, I, there's this, uh, really cool barcade, uh, in downtown OKC. And I went and met up with a couple of people there. And I was like, hey, let's play some fucking fighting games.

[00:05:57] I'm really, I'm, I'm not very good at fighting games. But, um, I'm like pretty decent at Soul Calibur. And I also play a lot of Kilik. And Kilik, I don't know, if people, for people who don't know Soul Calibur, a lot of fighting games have their own quirks with their fighting systems. In Soul Calibur, you, you have a button dedicated to horizontal attacks. Mm-hmm.

[00:06:42] I'm gonna fuck you up. Uh, and I picked Kilik. And apparently the fucking vertical button didn't work. So, I was only like doing like, hey ya, like really close right. Yeah, just so quick. Yeah, I got fucked up. And they were playing like Lizard Man or something. Oh, of course. So I got destroyed by like the worst fucking- Probably Voldo or something. And they're just like, ah, here we go.

[00:07:05] Cause like, with Kilik, you can fend off Voldo, um, because of that long distance. But if he gets close to you, you're like fucked. Yeah. Well, the best thing about Kilik is that he's one of the few people who have like a lot of like hit, hit, ground hits. And Voldo does like crawls on the ground. Yeah, terrifying. So that's what he does is he like dodges a lot of attacks going at your feet. And like Kilik has a ground slam like hit and stuff. Yeah. Monkey mode, I like to call it. Fair.

[00:07:34] Yeah, that is one of the first memories is playing those games with like a whole bunch of people. It was great. You said high school. I mean, I- Now that I'm thinking about it, cause we're about the same age, they weren't playing Gran Turismo. They were definitely playing like Need for Speed Underground or something. Something like that. I can't remember. Like the only- Or Carbon. Maybe? I don't know. I feel like that might be too underground.

[00:07:56] But like the only car game that I ever really played was Beetle Adventure Racing for the Nintendo 64. I fucking know what that game is. Funnily enough, I actually- I can see the box art in my mind's eye. Yeah. Shout out to Remember 64. I need to hook you and him up and see if you can get on that show and talk about Beetle juice racing. Beetle Adventure Racing.

[00:08:25] Yeah, cause it's just like the stinking Volkswagen Beetle cars when they came back into style like in the 90s for some odd reason. Did you play Slug Bug back where you live? Like the actual car game where you see a Slug Bug and you slug someone? Yeah. I don't know. See, that's the thing. It's like you never know when- You ever have a moment where you're like, oh, this thing everyone knows about. And then it's like, no, that's just an Oklahoma thing, dude. Nobody knows.

[00:08:54] That's just the local area thing. No. Nobody knows what Brahms is, you fucking weirdo. It sounds like a disease. Is that what cows get? What's going on? Yeah, no. That was a thing in my area as well. Cow disease? No. Slug Bug. Well, maybe. We have a lot of cows out here. It's fine. That's crazy. I don't even know what we're talking about. So we're a video games podcast. Yeah.

[00:09:25] Not a cow podcast. Not a cow podcast. So we're going to talk about the games we've been playing. And we'll start with me because I have a big ego and I'm not playing anything. Because I've been trying to beat this fucking long ass Tales of Symphonia ass game. I thought I had enough. I really did. I thought I had enough time. And spoiler alert, I did not beat this game. But that's okay. We're going on with the episode. That's right.

[00:09:54] But it looks like you've been playing some games. So give us a rundown. What's going on? Yeah. So about, when was it? Like roughly a couple weeks ago. I am a huge Tales nerd. And that's why you really picked Symphonia. So it could be on the podcast.

[00:10:13] So they recently did a remaster of Tales of Graces F and put that out into the universe on the new consoles and stuff like that. So I've been playing that on the Switch because I am, you know, kind of someone who likes to have games on the go. Why do they call it Tales of Graces F? Because is it F tier? F tier Tales game? Well, originally it was just Tales of Graces.

[00:10:42] And that was originally for the Wii. And then they came out with Tales of Graces F, which was it had more stuff, you know, improved and all of that. And that was for the PlayStation and stuff like that. So they remastered that and put that out on all of the places, the consoles. It's so weird because they have like Tales of Hearts R and stuff.

[00:11:10] It's like, I don't know what the words are. Because they did it to Tales of Symphonia as well. Yeah. But it doesn't have a letter. What is the remake called of the game? I can't remember. I'm flipping through the wiki right now because I was just looking at it. Because they... Symphonia came out originally on the GameCube.

[00:11:31] And then like 10 years later or whatever it was, they put it out for the PlayStation 3. And they did a whole kind of bundle and collector's edition thing. And that was Tales of Symphonia Chronicles. Yeah, that's what I'm looking at. Yeah. Yeah. So that's that.

[00:11:55] And then because it's so popular, they've just announced it like three different ways of putting it out. Like this. They've really... They've... Yes, that. She's like, I fucked her up. Yeah. Yeah, you did. I'm like, I can't even read that. Teirusu... Symphonia... Oh... Koronikulus. Well, I'm not... You're making it up.

[00:12:24] I'm actually reading it. I'm not... We are not the same. We are not the same. It's in Katakana, so it's fucking really hard. But, um... Yeah. Yeah, I don't know why. It just has that there as well. Yeah. I mean, really... It really... Just... I... Reiterates Tales of Symphonia the most out of all the games. So, yeah. It is weird because, like, I... Yeah, I wonder what the letters stand for. Or if it's significant or anything for, like, the story or whatever?

[00:12:53] There probably is. I just... I don't know. I'm just like, oh, cool. Tales game. I'll play it. Like, I know Tales of Hearts originally was for, like, the Game Boy Advance or something like that. Then they did a remaster, and that's Tales of Hearts R, for the PS Vita. Yeah. And that's... That's where I played that. That's where I played it as well.

[00:13:22] I got the Vita just for that game. And I was unfortunately, like, underwhelmed by it. But that's fine. Oh. Everybody. I know. I don't know. I think that's probably a popular opinion, actually. It might be. I don't know. It's not talked about as much. But, you know. I'm losing my mind because I'm sitting here staring at this. I shouldn't have did this. This katakana. And the end does not say Chronicles. So, it says... What does it say?

[00:13:52] The whole thing says... This is for Philip. This is for you, Philip. That checks out. Okay. And then it says...

[00:14:21] I mean, I assume that means Chronicles, right? Probably. I would assume so. Or, you know, that was the closest English word to what they were trying to get across. I don't know. That? It's in Katakana, which makes me infuriated. Because that's not a... That must be a loan word from fucking Germany or something. I don't know what the fuck I just read. Probably said something really evil. Probably. From Germany. Probably.

[00:14:50] So, Tales of Grace's F. I'm going to Google this real quick because I think I've played this. Probably. Maybe. It's got a banger of a theme song. I have played this. Okay. On the PlayStation 3, I've played this. Yeah. But I don't remember anything necessarily. It's... I mean, really, it's all about friendship. Like... I probably didn't beat this game.

[00:15:19] So, I was going to say, I don't recognize any of these characters, but I recognize everyone except for Blonde Dude and Girl with White and Red Hair. But I do recognize everybody. Yeah. Blonde Dude is Richard, and he is... Um... A catalyst to the game. You bet? Like Bondo? Sure. For a lot of people, yeah. Um... And then White and Red Haired Girl is Pascal. She's the quirky, um...

[00:15:48] Quirky character who... Just like Pedro? Her dad? Yeah. Just like... Sorry. This is the whole show, so yeah, I mean, you better get comfy. I'm getting used to it. Here we are. This is not how I interact with people in real life. Like, she's learning that lesson. I mean, I don't know. Maybe. Maybe, maybe. Maybe a little. Might need some more. Might need some more sake. Maybe. Maybe I do. It's a good thing I brought the bottle with me.

[00:16:19] Oh, okay. Good. You're gonna need it. I'm intolerable. All right, what's this other game? What the hell is this weeb shit you're bringing into my face? What? What do you mean? Persona 5 R? Yeah, with all these letters. What's with all these... It's the better version of Persona 5. Have you played Persona 5 before? I have. I beat the game. I was really obsessed with it.

[00:16:46] That's all I could think about when it first came out. It was like, if I wasn't playing the game, I was thinking about playing the game. Um, and so, uh, Royal I have not beaten yet because, uh, Okumara's Palace is, like, such a bitch. And I got stuck and thus rage quit for a little bit. But I still love the game, don't get me wrong. But, um... So you've never done all of the Royal content? Not all of it, but I'm getting there.

[00:17:16] I'm gonna get there. It's really good. Yeah, I started with over. Yeah, please don't. Because I'm just like... Because they took the original game and just made it better with Royal. And it can feel like a whole new game in a lot of sense. Well, they added, like, a whole new... Whole new character. Or public character. I meant, like, a whole new, like, what is it called? Semester. Yeah. A lot of semesters. It's like a quarter. Yeah. Where is it? I don't know.

[00:17:46] I don't know what I'm talking about. Whatever. In Japan high school days. Yeah. Yeah. They did that. They added a couple new characters. I'm kind of disappointed that Kasumi is not, like, a legit part of the thing. She's just kind of, like, there on the side. I thought she'd be more integral to it. I mean, not that she doesn't play an important part.

[00:18:14] But I'm just like, oh, that would have been so cool if she... I had the option to choose her as, like, the main to go through the story as. But it's fine. It's fine. Atlas... Like, as, like, the main character? Yeah. Atlas does not like women main characters. They just are like, nah. Nah.

[00:18:37] We're only doing boy main characters and you can only woo women and it's fine. It's fine. I'm not heard about it at all. I'm just trying to think because it's been, like, a few... It's, like, been two years since I've played the game. But there's, like, a lot of shit about her and I'm not sure if it's known to you yet. So I don't even know if I should talk about it. Yeah.

[00:19:04] I mean, I maxed out her companionship the first playthrough and I knew, like, she was going through, like, a lot of personal stuff. And that's why she was who she was in the beginning of the game. And even through it.

[00:19:24] Because she has a very strong moral stance with everything that's going on with Joker and the rest of the party. It's like, well, I don't believe in what you guys are doing. So... Anyways. And that's where you're at with her? Uh... More or less, yeah. Do you know? Because as I said... Wait. Do you... I maxed her out.

[00:19:55] That's not enough. I know. You have to max her out just to get the royal content. That's, like, the minimum. Yeah, I know. To even get to it. I... Well, as I said, I got stuck in Okumara at the boss battle. Because, like... Like, fuck those robots. I hate those fucking robots so fucking much. Too much. Because that's the whole... I know, I know. Because it's like... You probably can't say too much on it. I can't say anything. Because I'm, like, Kasumi. I'm, like, having to rack my brain for a... I literally...

[00:20:25] The listener could probably hear me tapping away, like... Kasumi Persona 5. Like, who is that? Why don't I remember? The cute redhead. Yes. She's... Look, you... You just need to drop Tales of Graces for fucking real. And get on Persona 5 Royal. I probably could. Yeah. Because... It... Like... I... Like... People probably, like... They listened to your description of Kasumi and... And they got upset. Probably. Oh. You gotta... You gotta continue. I'm...

[00:20:55] I'm... I... Like... Yeah. I will. Like, I get... I get the feeling that... Um... She's gonna change her mind, too. Because, obviously... Like... I know that she gets her own persona. Like, that's not anything crazy spoilery. So, I know that there's probably gonna be some... Um... Change of heart, so to speak. With her. I know... Crazy. Um... But I don't know anything about that just yet.

[00:21:25] Um... Because I'm stuck in fucking Okumara's palace. You just gotta look up a guide and get out of there. Yeah. Well, I tried. I tried doing that. It's the boss fight. And for some odd reason, I've tried it on all the different types of difficulties. I... And, like, I cannot get past... Like, the third round, fourth round of robots or whatever before I fight Okumara himself. And I just... I... Literally rage quit. And then started the game over.

[00:21:56] Because I... You started the game over because of that? Yeah. I really did. Because I'm like, I just need to figure out if I can get some better personas that will... Will kill all of them. Are you only saving in one spot? Uh... What do you mean? Like, you have a lot of save... I do not. Save spots. I do not. I am... I don't. I don't do that. You don't save in one spot or you don't save in multiple spots?

[00:22:24] I don't save in multiple spots. I think... Because I'm... I don't... I might be lying. You might be able to do that in Persona 5. I mean, I do. You were... So you watched... You watched me play Tales of Symphonia. I use every single save slot. Like, I'm on save slot, like, 80. Yeah, I saw that. I saw that. I was like... That literally would save me. Well, it's not brave. It's brave to use one slot. Because you wouldn't have to restart the whole game if you had multiple save slots. An oh shit button.

[00:22:55] No, I... I... You know what? Fair. That's a valid point. I can't even argue against that. The good thing, though, is that you can just blast through Persona 5. Like... Yeah. Because you... A lot of Persona 5's reading. You know? Yeah. Oh, for sure. You can, like, relive some of the best parts. Like, pots. The pots. Some of the best pots. Yeah. You can relive some of those. But, I mean, like, you can go through as fast as you really need to. The game is just so long. So I'm just shocked that you restarted it. I would...

[00:23:22] I would die of an aneurysm fighting the boss I can't beat before I restarted the game. Yeah. I was just... I was stuck. I was truly stuck. And I was like, well, this is... This is just how it is. So I assume you overwrote that one save, right? You just... I did not. Saved over. I have it. I still have it. Because I'm like, maybe. Maybe when... There might be a way to cheese one day. Listener, write in. Go to Baca Bitches. Yeah. Help me.

[00:23:49] Actually, if you could come over, I can turn on the game and you can, like, just play that part, the boss battle and everything. And then I'll be like, okay, great. Get out of my house. Yeah. I don't know if you should be inviting my listeners. Oh, no? Okay. That's fair. Never mind. D-night. We got an aura of degeneracy around us. I think I just naturally attract that anyways. So it's fine. Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah.

[00:24:17] The royal content is really good for Persona 5. I can't believe that Sashomaru showed up. That was fucking awesome. Wait, what? Hold on. Yeah, Sashomaru's side quest where you make Maruchan ramen. It's a crazy crossover. Wow. You know what? That does it for me. I'm going back in. Going back in. Going to fight it. Oh, and I'm also...

[00:24:43] I didn't type it in, but I'm also just now playing Final Fantasy VII. The remaster. The remaster or the remake? The remaster. The new, fancy, pretty... Or the remake, I mean. That's the remake. Yeah. I always think remaster is fancier. So mentally... Because of the word master? Yeah. Watching too much Fifty Shades of Grey or something? Nah, nah. It's just anime, man.

[00:25:13] It's in my brain. I'm sure there's a Fifty Shades of Grey-esque anime out there somewhere for us. Yeah, it's called hentai. Never seen that show. Me neither. Couldn't tell you. Don't know what it is. I don't remember what we were just about to talk about. Tales, yeah. Tales of Grey's? All of it, really. We can talk about any Tales game, just about. We need to move on. We need to move on to What Did Nave Buy?

[00:25:43] We're in news and updates. What Did Nave Buy? Look at these games. What do you think about these games? I bought Nobody Wants to Die. Yeah. Doesn't that make you want to play that game? I mean, that is a really interesting title. Do you die in Nobody Wants to Die? Have you died? Hopefully not. Hopefully you stay alive. I got the screenshot here. It looks really cool. There's some cyberpunk, but it's like steampunk, really.

[00:26:12] It looks like Bioshock Infinite and The Order 1886 had a baby. You know what? That's pretty accurate. That probably would have made a... That probably would have literally killed a caveman, hearing that sentence. What the fuck? Yeah. I mean, honestly, if a caveman is listening to this podcast, I'm actually very impressed. Because how do they know? That's me. I've never shown you my forehead, but I am part Troglodyte, actually. Nice.

[00:26:42] Neanderthal, I mean. Neanderthal? Both of us. Neanderthal, yes. Sorry. Yeah. Get it right. Get your type right. The... I don't know what Nobody Wants to Die is. It seems like just like a narrative game. Okay. Okay. I like it. I'm like, do you shoot people? Like, is it a shooter? I have no idea. Is it a shooter or... Okay. You see this screenshot? This is what all the screenshots look like on the Xbox store. So I couldn't gauge. Are those flying cars?

[00:27:12] Yeah. Are those flying? Nice. Yeah. They look like old, like, mafia style cars. Like the nice, like, the first Fords that were ever made. Are basically just flying through the air. You know what it looks like? Kind of the fifth element. Yeah. I've never seen that movie. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I love that movie. What a classic. I used to... I fucking... The listeners have heard this, like, eight times, but... So it's not funny to them. But, uh... Have you ever seen the Super Mario movie? Yes! I love that as a kid.

[00:27:44] Uh... I used to think the fifth element and that movie were the same movie. Until I was, like, 25. 25! Yeah. Like, unironically. I would watch the failed element, and I'm like, where are the turtle dudes? Yeah. Where's Louis Guzzamo or whatever? Where's he at, though? Yeah. Where's Luigi? I need a... I need a CEO. Taken care of. Right quick. So nobody wants to die. I really sold it to the listeners this time. I think so. Yeah.

[00:28:12] I don't really, uh... I have got to mute my Discord. Holy shit. Like, the Goop Troop is going nuts right now. Yeah. Tell them... Tell them to be quiet. And it looks like in that screenshot that you're also drinking. Oh, yeah? Which I can relate to. That's a flask.

[00:28:42] Yeah, yeah. Somebody made this for me. Oh, cool. But they didn't make the flask, but they made the little part. You see the fallout guy? Yeah. Yeah. It's burned in it. Yeah, beautiful. It's really cute. Uh, I drink rum in it one time, and then I try to drink whiskey in it. I can't even open it. Oh, it's probably sealed shut. It's like fucking well shut. Yeah, maybe. I was going to open it and smell it, but probably I'd get poisoned. Nah. Nah, it's alcohol. How could you ever get poisoned from alcohol?

[00:29:11] Oh, yeah, you're right. Excellent. Yeah, it's fine. You play Stalker 2, uh, you drink vodka to get rid of radiation. So I guess that's how strong the vodka is in Russia. You know? You know what? I mean, that's basically their water, so... Fair. Uh, so... The other game I bought was System Shock 2. Or System Shock 1. Is it System Shock 2? I don't even fucking remember. It just says System Shock, so I'm taking it. Yeah, I wrote that.

[00:29:39] So, it might be wrong. I am a fallible human. It's funny. There's a remake of either System Shock 1 or 2, I can't remember. Philip played this not too long ago. We have a... He put a little clip up on our YouTube of him getting fucking touched by some alien that just ganked him really fast. Lovely. That's funny. Look at this guy right here, this naked guy. If I, you know, if I was to die in space, I would like to become, like, a naked ghoul.

[00:30:10] That just harassed some random passerby, you know? Yeah, you know? I mean, if you become anything in space after you die, that would be impressive. Outside of just floating body part. Do you hear her? Do you hear that dog drinking? Yeah. The loudest dog in the fucking universe? She has to let you know that she is there and she is drinking. She's staying hydrated. What do you think about my apartment? It's beautiful.

[00:30:40] It's good. It's a good size. It's there. It's a lie. I have, like, a fishbowl lens. It's, like, 189 degrees or something. Okay, so it's cozy. Yeah, it's very cozy. You done, Molly? You distracted me. Oh, she's so happy. She's like, ha, you're talking to me. It's what I wanted all along. Yeah. It looks like I live in two dimensions. The listener can't fucking see this.

[00:31:08] It's brighter over here and, like, a little darker and mysterious on the other side. So, new pod updates. We don't got any updates, but we have a little anime corner now. We're going to throw this in here. I don't know if we're going to do this too often, but you watching any anime lately? So much anime. I am watching Apothecary Diaries right now, a little bit. A little bit of that. I'm a good probably eight episodes in, I think.

[00:31:40] Also, started watching Signs of Affection. I can't even talk. Signs of Affection, which is, like, really gooey and romantic. And I don't know how much I can take of that, but it's cute. Apothecary Diaries is kind of romantic, isn't it? I guess in a way, but it's still more about the main character. Mau Mau doing Mau Mau things. Yeah.

[00:32:10] Yeah. Doing Mau Mau things, which is being obsessed with medicine. And, you know, she's a very interesting character. And, you know, because she's willing to sacrifice her body in the name of medicine to see if things are going to effectively heal whatever ailment she has put on herself. You know, the first thing I thought when you said sacrifice her body was, like, prostitution? It's insane.

[00:32:40] Well, she did work in a brothel. So, you know, she lives next to one. She's part of that. That's like a Chinese place for coffee, right? Yeah, absolutely. Because coffee was really big back then. Yeah, so was opium. Those dens really hit it good. And if you got your coffee shop next to the opium den, you were really making big bucks. Dude, it's great. You do the opium. You go down her.

[00:33:10] Then you go next door. To put up her. It's a fucking infinite money glitch. And then you just leveled out eventually. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, no problem. Somebody derecommended a Paul Carey Diaries. I watched, like, two episodes of it. Yeah. And it was because I was talking to them about... It was from another podcast. I can't remember who it was. It was, like, a Nintendo podcast, I think. It's been so long since I talked to those people. But they were like, yeah, a Paul Carey... It was when it was, like, brand new. So it was, like, only on, like, episode five, I think.

[00:33:40] But they were like, oh, if you like Spy Family, you're going to love a Paul Carey Diaries. It's, like, the same shit. And I was like, oh, okay. I trust you. And it really is just, like, cute girl makes funny faces. And I'm like, okay, I get that. Like, that's true. But it's like, I mean, Spy Family is great and amazing. And Apothecary Diaries is also great and amazing. But they are very different genres and subjects. You know?

[00:34:09] It's, like... Nah. A bit of a stretch. Both solid animes. I really like both of them. But a bit of a stretch to suggest that one. If you like Apothecary Diaries, you should watch Jiu-Jitsu Kaizen. Right. Right. Yeah. It's, like, um... If you like Demon Slayer, you should watch Aran Host Club. Yeah. Like, they're just so similar. Or, like, uh...

[00:34:37] What was it that... Um... Because my friend Stephanie, who I do the podcast with, her husband was like, Oh, if you like... Um... I think... Because one of her favorite animes is, uh... Madoka Magica. And, um... Sick. Her husband was like, Well, if you like that, you should watch Cowboy Bebop. I'm like... What? Yeah, dude. What? And then, uh...

[00:35:06] Her husband was like, But Cowboy Bebop is a comedy. It's super funny. And just left it at that. The part where they're sad and they're moody and they're brooding? That's so funny to me. And, you know, uh... Main guy Spike Spiegel thinks, like, the love of his life is, like, dead. You know? It's cool. It's cool. It's so funny. It's great. I've reached the extent of my anime knowledge. These are all eight animes I've ever heard of in my life. I got no more. I can send you a list.

[00:35:36] It's fine. Nice. What is this first one? Boku no Pico. Yeah! Just for you. Top of the list. It's a love story. Truly. I'm gonna love it. Alright, that was Anime Corner. We're gonna do our Patreon really quick. And then we're gonna go to our favorite section. Am I the Assholes? So here at Gaming Together, we work hard to provide excellent co-op content for you, the listener. If you have the means, please consider supporting us on Patreon. The link is in the description below. It's a list of our current supporters.

[00:36:06] Jose Martinez, Berserker This, Mr. Kwong, InsaneCracker04, Nikolai at Night. Thank you so much for your support. If you can't give us any monetary value, don't have any disposable income, go into those goddamn ratings and rate us good. You heard how that guy talked shit about us last month, last week, whenever it was. I'm gonna hold this against all of you listeners. You gotta go represent. And go over to Baka Bitches and give them some love, give them some five-star reviews. We would love that so much. Really helps us out.

[00:36:35] Alright, we're gonna go to a break. We're gonna go take a pee-pee poo-poo time. And maybe a nap. We're gonna do the M by the Asshole section. Yeah, definitely need that. So, it is time. It is time. It has been! Mortal Kombat reference for everybody. It is time for the M by the Asshole section. Time for us to go online, assist gamers in need. To help them.

[00:37:05] No fair, in fact, the assholes are not. You have the M by the Asshole sheet. Have you found something that you wanna... You were really interested in this sheet at the beginning. I don't know how much of that was recorded. It was. Uh, I have no idea either. And I... It's so hard to choose which one. Um... Oh my gosh. Uh... Uh... I'm panicking. Which one do I want? I usually... This is why I don't even look. I just take... I just eliminate that.

[00:37:33] Eliminate that choice from my brain. Okay. Um, I picked... What did I pick? I picked... Uh... No, I didn't pick that. It didn't open. So never mind. This is very unprofessional. Are you gonna edit this out? Are you highlighting? Yes. Fantastic! Um... Are you sitting on 17 right now? Yeah. I am. Did you color that? Did you color that gray? I did not.

[00:38:03] I don't know if the... It was white. It was white when I touched it. Did you lie? No! I'm not. I don't know how anything works. I don't do this fancy docky stuff. I'm sure she should. I love how... I'm like looking at it and I'm like, this seems like something I've read before. And then I went back to the dock and... Uh-huh. ...there's a tag on it that says,

[00:38:31] this is similar to another one but not a repeat. Thank you, Phillip. Oh, bless his accuracy. He like fucking even... He just... He just knew. He knew I was going to be like, hmm. Okay. Oh, you know what? I think I want 11. I'm gonna do 11. OP wants BF to do more around the house. Okay. Well, let me color this while we're... Before we... Before I forget. Before I forget this! It's deleted!

[00:38:59] You fucking picked a deleted one! Uh... Let me see. Let me see. Because sometimes Phillip saves them. Oh, he did! Okay, let's see. This is the full thing. No! The one I wanted, the OP deleted it. What the fuck? How dare they? That was gonna be juicy. Whatever. Hold on. I've got it. Look. Check this out. Oh. Is that the magic? It's blue for some reason. But I got it. It's in the notes now.

[00:39:29] If you want to read it. Yeah. Okay. Where's the notes? There we are. So, with this one, we don't... Since it is deleted... And this is the Am I the Asshole with an H at the end subreddit, so there's no bot. But the title is Am I the Asshole for getting mad at my husband for wanting to go to work or help her on the house while I do everything. Yeah. Not wanting to. Not wanting to work. Not wanting to. Yeah. Gotcha. I'm already fucking up.

[00:39:59] It's fine. It's what I'm here for. You want to read all that? Yeah. So, I, female, 32, work full-time as a marketing manager. My husband, male, 34, has been out of work for a while now, and we're really struggling financially. My salary just about covers the bills, but there's not much left for anything else. It's honestly been super stressful, and I feel like I'm drowning sometimes.

[00:40:27] At first, my husband said he was looking for a job, but lately, let's be... It's become clear he's not really putting in much effort. When I ask about it, he says he's waiting for the right opportunity, or that he's not in the right headspace. Same, brother. Same. But I've noticed he spends a lot of time just gaming, watching TV, or napping.

[00:40:55] He hasn't been doing much around the house, either. I'm the one doing all the cooking, cleaning, laundry, and grocery shopping. I feel like I'm doing everything while he does nothing. Last night was the breaking point. I came home after a long day at work to a messy house, dishes everywhere, laundry piling up, the bathroom was disgusting, and I still had to cook dinner for both of us.

[00:41:25] I was already tired and frustrated, and when I asked him why he hadn't done anything, he said he wasn't feeling in the mood today. I just lost it. I know. I knew what she meant. I get it. She was in a mood. Don't correct them. We got to... Sorry. Okay. All the blemishes. We're human. This was written by me about my dogs, by the way. Oh. They are jobless, and they just lounge around all day. Never clean.

[00:41:55] Laundry piled up. Jesus. They don't cook you dinner. What the... Fuck. I told him I couldn't keep doing everything alone. I work full time, I'm paying the bills, and I'm doing all the chores around the house. I told him it wasn't fair that I was carrying all the weight of the house and our finances, and that if we weren't going to go... If we were going to get through this, we both needed to be pulling our weight.

[00:42:22] He got defensive and said I was being too harsh on him, that he was just trying to decompress, and deserved a break. I honestly couldn't believe it. The argument got really heated, and I said some things I probably shouldn't have. I told him that I felt like I was taking care of another kid, not a partner, and that I was at my breaking point. I told him I didn't know how much longer I could keep doing this.

[00:42:50] He got really upset and said I was attacking him, and stormed off to clear his head. I feel bad... I feel bad about some of the things I said, but at the same time, I'm just so exhausted. I'm constantly running on empty, and I don't know what else to do. I love him, but I can't keep doing everything myself. Am I the asshole for snapping at him and calling him out on his lack of effort? Ooh.

[00:43:19] A real downer, you decided to make. I mean... I don't know if it's a downer so much as it's so common. It's so common. Yeah, I'm going through it right now. Look at this fucking... Look at this bitch. Just laying there on the floor. Just like, why won't you pay attention to me? I'm starving for affection. I can already tell what these comments are going to be like. From who?

[00:43:49] Me or everyone else? From everyone else. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Well, maybe you too, because this seems pretty cut and dry. It's so cut and dry. But what do you think? I think that, well, there is probably a lot of mental health issues happening for him. And, you know... I think you're giving him too much credit. Maybe, but also, like...

[00:44:19] But there's also a selfishness. Because, like, when you are in a partnership, like, everyone is going to have the really good days, the really bad days. And, like, in a partnership, if someone is not at their, you know, 100%, it's like, okay, you end up covering for that. And you're putting in 120%, let's say. For real, for real. Yeah.

[00:44:48] But that should only be... 100 with the lines under it. 100%, for real. 100 with the lines under it.

[00:45:23] It's... He should start a podcast. That would be the perfect excuse. Like, I'm trying to build an empire. You don't see my vision? Why don't you support me in all my endeavors? Yeah. He's going to be a gaming influencer, right? Look, the internet is now a business expense. All right? Yeah. I can... Tax writer. Yeah. The internet is our tax writer. What do you mean I'm not doing anything for this family? Yeah.

[00:45:51] You know what I picked up on is that she says something subtle that kind of gives insight to their family life, because they're married. Yeah. But one thing that she says is that she feels like she's taking care of another kid. Mm-hmm. So I think they have kids. Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like it. At least one other kid, at the very least.

[00:46:13] I wish she would have also added more into that, because, I mean, that's another thing, is having a kid or two to take care of on top of working full-time, on top of maintaining the house, cooking for everyone. And, like, honestly, I'm surprised this girl has not murdered him by now. Like, it's a lot. It's a lot.

[00:46:40] I was kind of thinking about it from the other way, because it's like, you might, sometimes you don't realize what people are doing. I'm not saying this guy's probably doing a whole lot. Like, I'm not saying this guy's doing, like, a ton. Mm-hmm. But, I mean, he has to be taking care of the kid at some, to some degree, right? Uh, maybe not. And there is some mode of convenience to that? Like, I mean, because she's doing the laundry in the bathroom and the dinner and stuff.

[00:47:05] But, I mean, there is something to be said about, like, being there for a kid more than you would be if you were working. Yeah. But, like, there's also, it's hard to say because I know that, um, because it sounds like he was previously working. And if she was working, then that means they have either some sort of daycare set up for the kid. And so it could be that that kid is still going to daycare and dad is still at the house doing nothing.

[00:47:35] That would be sick. You get so much Call of Duty in while the kids are in the daycare. Clearly, he is living his best life because he is playing Call of Duty and taking naps. Where is the gaming in this, by the way? This is supposed to be, this is supposed to be gaming related. Did he mention gaming at all? Ask Phillip. Phillip, you fucking didn't read this one. Well, he, she does mention that all he does is game and watch TV and nap. The word gaming was mentioned.

[00:48:04] So it counts. But no, this is a thing that is often, like, as a woman, something often dealt with. Like, oh, you know, it's all fun and games until you get married. And then all he's doing is fun and games and you have all of the other responsibilities. You know, so I don't know.

[00:48:30] There's probably the aspect that he was working, he was contributing, and then he got let go. And that can be hard for people. Must have been a government worker. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. He was probably, like, sitting pretty in his government job. Yeah. But still, it's like being let go from a job can be really hard on the mentality.

[00:48:57] And so it's like, yeah, I get that time to decompress. But if that is taking months and months and months, it's going to be a burden as well for the other partner. And it's like, girl, you need to sit down with him. Sit down with him. Have a heart to heart and be like, where do you see this going? Where do you want to be in life?

[00:49:27] Is he getting unemployment checks? Uh, it doesn't say anything like that. Um, I don't know. It probably also depends on where they're located, too. Because if she's working full time, I don't know. I don't know. Living in New York City. And just barely making ends meet. Good golly. Studio apartment. Family of four. I don't know. On one income.

[00:49:56] Yikes. Oh, that, that, no. Just move, girl. Just move the whole family. I don't know. Uh, it's, I don't know. It just, I think it comes down to, he could legitimately have had really, like, a depressing season. Um, in the beginning of being let go.

[00:50:20] And now he's just so used to being in this complacent space that it's hard for him to get out of it. And so, really, she needs to have a sit down and say, listen, I'm exhausted. I can't keep doing this anymore. So, you do. Here's the, the choices. The choice is, is you start actually looking for a new job.

[00:50:49] Or I've got to leave. That, that's really what it is. I'm saying it's, you're saying women don't want to be a mommy, a mommy of a 32 year old or whoever the fuck holds this place. Yeah. Yeah, I am saying that because I almost was one. Damn. I'm going about love all wrong. Damn it. So sorry. All the wrong places. All right. So, overwhelming asshole. Uh, big gaming.

[00:51:19] You should just stop paying your electricity bill. That'll say. Yeah. Honestly, do what it takes to make them uncomfortable. Be like, oh, couldn't pay for the electricity. Couldn't pay for the internet. Turn the, turn the air conditioner up to like 76. 76. Make them burn. 76 is burning? Yeah. It's hot. Oh, okay. It's hot. 69 or nothing. Wow.

[00:51:48] It's more than just a sex number. It's a comfort level. All right. So let's go to 58. Okay. That sounds like a good, good round number. This one is tiny. We might need to do another one. Tiny. All right. Yeah. This one's tiny. Yeah. Well, I'll read this. This is by Chrissy L. Chrissy Elliott. Ooh, Chrissy Elliott. Nice.

[00:52:17] This is looking like it might possibly be. No, this looks like a throwaway. But they are posting in. Wait, hold on. I think I found something here. So they're posting in bog. They've got three posts in their entire lifetime. Three years ago. This was two years ago. They're in by the asshole. Three years ago, they posted in Bakugan. That's telling. Just looking for the worth of a card.

[00:52:46] And then eight months ago, they posted this post on their own Reddit or something. I don't know how Reddit works really. But it says, for of a truth against thy holy child Jesus. What does that even mean? I'll tell you. I'll read the whole post. It's only like two sentences long. Okay. I might be saying some heinous shit. I don't know what this is going to say. We'll find out. Okay. So the post on his own page.

[00:53:15] For of a truth against thy holy child Jesus. That was the first sentence and the title. Whom thou hast anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the genitals and the people of Israel. Genitals. And the people of Israel. Gentiles. But yeah, close enough.

[00:53:40] We're gathered together for to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done. And that's it. That's the post. That's it. Makes no sense. It sounded like it was going somewhere and then it didn't go anywhere. I don't even know what that might be even alluding to. It's just... Genitals. It's almost like... Yeah.

[00:54:08] It sounds like someone was tripping a little bit. On some ketamine. Got really spiritual for a second there. Yeah. He needed to let it out. Got that holy spirit in him. All right. It's kind of like when you're either drunk or something and you think you're all poetic and you tap in like your notes app on your phone, like something that just came to mind.

[00:54:38] You're like, this is so deep. Yeah. And you wake up the next morning and you read it and you're like, what? What? Dude. What was I on? Fucking... It's even worse when you're on like fucking mushrooms. Because it's like... I have no idea what this means. This means nothing. I cried about this for three hours. Like... I don't know. I know. Drugs are a hell of a drug. All right.

[00:55:06] So this is Am I the Asshole for trying to prove my point? Oh, it's a child. I, 17 male, got fed up with my 14 male brother. He hogs the TV for himself for several hours per day to play No Man's Sky on our Nintendo Switch. I confronted him about his behavior and he continued to play for two hours and after proceeded

[00:55:32] to boot up another game after several times I told him that I also want though watch something which is not No Man's Sky. That was a long sentence. I stood between him and the TV and told him that I will stand there until he says something. This led to an argument and said that I couldn't even stand for two hours.

[00:55:59] For context, without the T, I am overweight but... I am overweight but can sometimes be very stubborn to prove something. So naturally, I stood between him and the TV for an hour. After he got fed up with me, I went upstairs to his room.

[00:56:25] I proceeded to follow him and stand there for another hour. Am I the asshole for doing this? Dude, go get a job and save up for your own TV. They're like 300 bucks for a big one. Just shut up. He's 17! You're saying a 17-year-old can't get a job? You can't do it. Yeah, you can bust people. Maybe. He can flip burgers at McDonald's. I mean, like, shit.

[00:56:55] In this economy? Yeah, absolutely. You gotta have a bachelor's degree to get to McDonald's, man. Not where I live and they pay you the same amount that I get paid at my actual job. And I got a bachelor's degree. So come to California. Work over here. It's fine. No, like, I don't think you're an asshole necessarily. I just think you're petty as fuck. This is a kid. Open and shut. This is a child.

[00:57:24] Doing a child thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What's crazy? What is the spiritual journey he went on? So this was two years ago. So he's like 19 now. He's definitely experiencing with fucking devil's lettuce, right? Yeah, something. He's getting high on something. And he's thinking he's being spiritually poetic there. This dude, he's at church camp, right? Yeah.

[00:57:49] And he's got his first hit of chewing tobacco. He's got that dip in his lip. And it just went straight to his head. He took it straight to the dome and he started talking to God. He's like, hold on. I've got something for this. Let me go on my Reddit. Yeah. I think he's gone through some things. I think his brother still occupies the TV. Yeah.

[00:58:18] And so now all he has is chewing tobacco. What? Fucking hysterical is it's a Switch. Just fucking take it off the TV. Just make him play it in docked mode, dude. It wouldn't be that hard. It really wouldn't. Unless it's a Switch Lite. No, that's the opposite. Switch Lites can't connect to the TV. So yeah, just take it out of docked mode, dude. Yeah, just take it out. Beat him up. And throw it in his room. He'll go fetch.

[00:58:46] So he's 17 years old and he's shaped like a blueberry. Yeah. Sounds like it. So his 14-year-old brother must be like Dwayne the Rock Johnson, right? Or like really scrawny. Just really scrawny. You're obviously not scared of him because you followed him to his room and then you did the Snorlax in front of his fucking TV. Yeah. You know what I'm talking about? Oh, yeah.

[00:59:12] I would say that this is a first world problem. And the hormones are raging. And honestly, like I get being upset about a sibling hogging a communal thing. But at the end of the day, like really, if you're that upset about it, try and find a way to get your own TV. It's a communal thing. That's a religious thing, right? Communal? Communal?

[00:59:42] I mean, you know, like a kitchen is a communal area. I don't know. I feel, isn't that common? No, I meant like, isn't that like a ritual? No. What am I talking about? Communal. Like it's, it's like a common room. Communal. Like it's communal as in like people can come together and do one thing, if that makes sense. So it's a communal area. Like the family room is communal area. The TV in said family room is communal.

[01:00:13] Am I high? Like there's a thing called where you eat the bread and the wine. Isn't that called like, oh, you know. Which stems from because you're all doing it together as a group. Isn't it crazy how words like are like connected to each other? Yeah. It's fucking wild. So, so crazy. Anyway, I mean, you're not really an asshole, I guess, but like lose some weight.

[01:00:42] You just grow up. Grow up, dude. All right. Oh, that was fun. You want to do another one? I mean, that one was kind of short. Do you want to read? Do you want to pick one, read one? Do you want me to pick you one to read? Yeah, pick me one. Are you going to, are you going to read it in a voice? Was my voice good? I could. Your voice was great. Kind of made my. It was very like, uh, it reminded me of like a Sonic dub over or something. Yeah. Chili dogs. Yeah. Chili in between my toes.

[01:01:11] My Sonic the Hedgehog feet. Ah, the visuals. Please. No. Okay, which one? It's always what I'm thinking about. Sonic? Uh, yeah. Let's go to, uh, how about 65? Let me get there. Mm, this doesn't look funny, actually. Never mind. Oh, okay. Let me find a funnier one.

[01:01:40] Didn't we just do 58? Yeah. Hold on. I didn't mark it. Oh. Let me mark it. Yeah. All right. Let's do 76. That sounds like fun. All right. Let me get there. 76. There we go. All right. Well, this one's deleted, but it's got an auto mod, so it's here. Woo-hoo! If you look, if you look like four, there's only a couple comments, but if you look like

[01:02:09] one of the three comments, it's going to be the story that got saved. So, in the main Am I the Asshole one, it'll archive the fucking story if it gets deleted. That's good. Okay. All right. So, this is another small one, so that's good. This won't be a seven-hour episode. All right. So, where is it? Okay. The auto moderator thing? Is that what I'm saying? Okay.

[01:02:34] So, the title of it was, I can only see it from the link, but it's like, would I be the asshole for asking to play League of Legends with, and then that's the whole link. So, leaves you in suspense. All right. So, I, a 19 male, is that a good male voice? I don't know. That's what I sound like in my head.

[01:02:56] So, I, 19 male, recently invited my friends, 19 male, and girlfriend, 18 female, to play A-R-A-M in League of Legends. By the way, if you're playing League of Legends, very sus. She's shaking her head. That's A-Ram. A-Ram. I don't know. I don't know shit about League of Legends. So, a bit of a backstory.

[01:03:24] Me and my friend used to play A-Ram all the time, sometimes with his girlfriend. I enjoyed playing with her. She was a little quiet, but a chill player who could keep their cool. We didn't really talk that much, but we were friends on League. After they broke up, my friend stopped playing League of Legends, but I saw his ex-girlfriend on all the time. I wanted to invite her to play A-Ram with me, but it just felt messed up.

[01:03:52] It feels like I'm inviting her to a date or something. Full disclosure, she's an attractive lady, and I wouldn't mind dating her or anything, if we really get along. But that's not really my expectation. But with A-Ram, it's different. So, my question to Reddit is, would I be the asshole if I played League of Legends with my friend's ex?

[01:04:18] Should I consult my friend first, or just go for it and see where this leads? Gotta slide in there with the Johnny Brubble. He-ha-hoo! Fucking... Hey, mama! Listen, listen, 19 male, you're already thinking about dating her. Like, let's be for real. Probably, yeah. You're smokescreen. Yeah.

[01:04:47] Smokescreening it. Really, this is just your way to get closer to her again and then open that door. Granted, she might just be like, ha-ha, no, we're just friends. But, you know, I just think, like, the reality is that League of Legends is a smokescreen for what you really want, and that's to date her. Direct violation of bro code. Absolutely. Do not pass go.

[01:05:17] Yeah, do not collect $200, my friend. Yeah, I think there's... I just thought it was like, but with ARAM, it's different. What is ARAM? What is this? I don't know anything about League of Legends. It means all random, all mid. Oh, okay. Which is a game mode where there's... So in League of Legends, normally there's three... I won't go too far into this, listener, don't worry.

[01:05:43] But there's normally three lanes and everyone has rolls and they do the thing. So in ARAM, there's only one lane. So all ten people are in a clusterfuck in the middle of this one lane. And it's all random, so you don't get to choose your character. You just get someone. And there are re-rolls, so if you get someone you really don't want to play, you can re-roll them away a couple times. Okay. It is just a game where you just stop thinking, really. Okay. I don't know. Okay.

[01:06:12] It's hard to describe in different game terms. You know in Fortnite, you have the battle royale mode? Sure. And then there are just custom games where you can just go and you're just around. You're just not doing any Fortnite thing. It's kind of like that. Except you're still playing the game, technically, but there's no stakes whatsoever. Well, no wonder it's different for him. Yeah, very different.

[01:06:35] Like, because I know, like, years ago when League of Legends first came out, one of my friends was like, come on, play this with me. Play this with me. I was like, okay. I was, first of all, really shit. And the thing about the game is that, at least back then, I don't know if it's different now, but it's like you are more or less kind of thrown into it, even if you're new.

[01:07:02] And you have like all these people that have been putting 10,000 hours into it. And so they're like expert level and you're just there like, I'm new. I don't know what to do. So that was a situation I was thrown into. And they're like, get out of here. You suck. I'm like, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. This is my first time here. League of Legends, notoriously positive community. Yeah. Truly not negative at all. Not toxic.

[01:07:30] I don't think I've ever been angrier at a video game than League of Legends. League of Legends makes me, it brings out the angriest person in me. No, that's fair. That's fair. I don't, I don't know what I'm doing. And it's, it's just a no for me. It's a no for me. And the chokehold that it had on so many people when it first came out. It's not as bad now, I don't think, because I don't really hear too much about it, but.

[01:08:00] It's just chugging along silently. It's, the problem is that there's a lot of games that are like, just fucking crack for crackheads now. Like. Yeah. I got a fucking buddy, Jono, from Elder Trolls. Shout out to them. They just came back recently. Hey. From their long hiatus. But he's always talking about goddamn Apex Legends in the group chat, and everyone's like, shut up. It's over. It's over. No one wants that. Oh, poor God.

[01:08:29] He fucking loves it. He loves that game. But, anyway. Good for him. That's good. Do not play League. You're an asshole immediately. Immediately. You're an asshole immediately. You lose. Immediately. Because it's not even about, take the League of Legends thing out. You just want to connect with her, find a way to talk her up, and get to know her more, or whatever. But, yeah, I just, yeah, you're the asshole. Don't, don't go against bro code.

[01:08:58] For real, for real. For real advice. How, so, for one, how close are you to this guy? Like, how much do you value this person's friendship? Yeah. And for two, if you do value it more than, like, a fucking five out of ten, then talk to him. Just be like, dude, just man to man. I'm thinking about just playing the game with this person. Is that okay? And what would happen if I did end up, like, if something happened? Like, it's hard to have those conversations, but you have to, like, fucking weigh it.

[01:09:27] And it sounds like you're probably going to succumb to the fucking devil on your shoulder if you just continue on the path you're continuing on right now. Because every day it seems like you're staring at her username and your fucking friends are just like, is it today? Is today the day I ask her? But, uh. Staring into the void, hoping. There's a big potential that she doesn't even want anything to do with you because she associates you with him. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:09:51] And, like, there is, like, for a girl's perspective, if my ex-boyfriend's friend starts hitting me up, I'm kind of, like, immediately grossed out a little bit. Because I'm like, ooh, that means you might have thought something could have happened even when I was with my ex. You know? Like, mm, I don't know. Yeah, it's not a good...

[01:10:17] Maybe get off the League of Legends and go on dates. Man. Yeah. Just get off the games. League of Tinder. League of Bumble. Yeah. One of those. League of Grindr. League of Hinge, baby. Yeah. I don't know that one. I don't know that. Is that one a gay one, too? No, that's just an everyone one. Don't like it. I don't know why they call it Hinge, though. Like.

[01:10:48] Unhinged? Do you get... What? I don't know. I don't know. Dating apps are not for me. Anyway. Grindr's the gay one. Yes. That was the joke, listener. Grindr's for gay people. I think. I mean, I don't actually know. I'm pretty sure. Pretty sure. I don't know. I'm not gay, so I don't know. Fuck! Sorry! Sorry to didn't even... Why did I even invite you on here? I don't know. All right. When is all this blue shit?

[01:11:17] Oh, this is that old... Never mind. We're going on a break. I'm losing my mind already. I'm gonna grab a beer. We're gonna fucking party on Wayne. And party on Garth over at Tales of Symphonia Land. Maybe. Maybe we liked it. I don't know. You don't know. You gotta listen. We'll find out, I guess. Music plays. I still got ice in it, at least. So... Might as well make my sock get cold.

[01:11:50] Oh, no! Goddamn. The bottle. The whole bottle. How you feeling? It was just whatever was left in the bottle. Like, I think I only had this much in it. When I first started, so... It's not a lot. I'm feeling good. You feeling this? You liking the vibes? You liking the vibes. It's going great. Kind of feels the same. Like we're just talking normally, which is good. Yeah. Except I'm doing voices now.

[01:12:21] You're doing voices now? You mean to tell me you've never done voices while reading the MIBS? Oh, no. I do voices on the MIBS all the time. That's the whole reason we do it. It gives me an excuse. To do your voice acting credits. Yeah. I love that. Anyway. We're back. We're back. Next time on Tales of Symphonia. Yeah.

[01:12:48] The Tales of Symphonia, we have the Steam Grab. The Steam Grab is just referencing the porting of the game. It says, First time on Steam. Based on the PlayStation Registered Trademark 3 port of the original GameCube game. No registered trademark. This RPG classic is finally available for personal computers. Very positive recent reviews of 16 of them. 16. Popular game. Very popular game.

[01:13:16] Released on Steam February 1st, 2016. But it released on GameCube July 13th, 2004. Does that make you feel old? It does. It was like nine years ago, at least. I know. I was just a baby when I first played this game. Yeah. We were both like 10? 11? 12? I don't know. In 2004, I was 14. I'll just keep saying numbers until I'm right.

[01:13:47] I don't know. So, I mean, 7 plus 4 is 11. So, I'd have been 11. Oh, just a baby. Chewy baby knave. Just a bab. Oh, babe, please. Can I have another RPG, please? I want another Final Fantasy 7. Can you give me that? Nah. Nah. Nah, not yet. Rejected. Yeah, no. Yeah, that came out super long ago.

[01:14:14] Like, the first time I saw an advertisement for Tales of Symphonium was when I had a monthly subscription to Shonen Jump, and I saw an ad in Shonen Jump. Shonen, I'm getting my ass jumped by my dog again. Yeah, truly. She's like, yeah, yeah, you're talking about me? Huh? Huh? Huh? Just have her in your lap. It's fine. She's fucking bigger than me. She's huge.

[01:14:45] Yeah, the bigger the dog, the more they think that they're a lap dog. That's just how it goes. Oh, sweet baby. But yeah, so. Yeah, she sucks. She doesn't. She's great. She keeps scratching. You probably don't notice it, but she is scratching the shit out of me. Yeah. She's scratching my arms up. Yeah. Gotta wear long sleeves just to protect your skin. Yeah, everywhere. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah.

[01:15:13] Um, yeah, I was an innocent 14 year old when I first played Tales of Symphonia on the GameCube. Thanks to Shonen Jump because I avidly read those. I remember them out in like Walmart. I remember seeing them. So it would be like Shonen Jump and right next to it, it'd be like official Xbox magazine. And I'd be like, well, this decision's obvious.

[01:15:40] Because that one's got a CD with Silent Hill 3 demo on it. So I mean. Yeah, so obvious. Or Silent Hill 4, I mean. Yeah, you went with the demo CDs and I went for the Yu-Gi-Oh cards. So we are not the same. Yeah. We are not the same. Yeah. I had my Yu-Gi-Oh cards stolen in elementary school. Oh no. I had a fucking bitchin' Black Skull Dragon deck. And, uh, gone. Just gone. I didn't know how to play a game anyway. Are you talking about rebuilding? Uh, me neither.

[01:16:10] It was really tough. I fucking hate Yu-Gi-Oh. I have a permanent hatred for it now. Dang, what happens? No. I am a Magic the Gathering player, unfortunately. Oh, okay. And I hate Magic the Gathering now too. So it's like, I'm just homeless. You're just not a card person anymore. I'm a tabletop, I'm homeless, I'm a tabletop homeless person. Uh, I mean, no, I love card games. That's the problem. I loved Magic too much.

[01:16:39] And so it became Fortnite-ified, Marvel-ified, Disney-ified. I don't know if you know anything about what's going on in Magic right now, but it's... No, you're not. My least fucking favorite thing in the world. They're doing crossovers with Spongebob and Final Fantasy and Marvel and it's disgusting. Yeah, but... Because now you're looking...

[01:17:03] Like, literally, it's like, I equip the Krabby Patty formula onto my Hatsune Miku and... Like, it's fucking garbage. God damn, it makes me mad. Is it... I mean, I know that there's like, uh... It's not super obscure card trading card game, but it's the, um, what is it? The Weiss Cruise... Weiss Cruise or whatever? Oh, the Weiss game? That's like actually a crossover game? Yeah. That's cool.

[01:17:32] That's the one with fucking... They have Persona 5 ones too. Look. Okay. If the point is it's a crossover thing. Right. I don't mind that much. Yeah. Like, that's why I'm like, Fortnite... The point wasn't that it was a crossover thing at the beginning, but nobody gave a shit about the beginning thing. And then it became the crossover thing. So it's like, I mildly tolerate Fortnite. So, but that game, it's like literally... I think there's like a Mortal Kombat deck and shit. Like, the whole point is that they're all crossover.

[01:18:01] The Magic the Gathering have like 30, 40 years of like lore and shit going on. Right. And now nobody plays any of those cards. Like, nobody plays... Because not only... Because when they do those products, like the fucking Marvel collaborations, they make them really strong so people will buy them. And then no one uses any of the other old cards. Like, it's so frustrating. Yeah, I don't... It's just so mad. I don't know.

[01:18:30] I'm sorry. I get it. Like, I understand the frustration with it. It's okay. Everyone's tired of listening to me talking. I bring it up every like three or four weeks, but I just... That's fair. I just hate it. All right. So, the Metacritic of this game. I don't even know how we got onto that. Oh, we were talking about our history of preconceptions. You actually like segued right in, like smoothly into what the next part is. But the Metacritic is 86, which is really good. Really, really good for an older game.

[01:19:01] So our history of preconceptions. You were talking about... I mean, do you have any other... Like, how did... So, this was the first... Was this your first Tales game? Yes. This was my very first Tales game that I was ever exposed to. And it was because of Shonen Jump. Like, they put a full page ad in Shonen Jump for this game. And I was like, oh, this actually looks really cool.

[01:19:28] And I really liked the art of the characters that they had in it. And if anyone knows, the person who did the illustrations for Tales of Symphonia is also the illustrator of Oh My Goddess. So, like, there's... Yeah, the Boku no Pico guy. Yeah, that one. You know, I... I'm gonna tell... I'm gonna let everyone in on this.

[01:19:57] I have no idea what Boku no Pico is. I just know it makes people who like anime laugh. And so, I just bring it up. And then everyone laughs, and I'm like, yeah, I'm the cool guy. I know who I am. I'll tell you about it when we're not recording. Or maybe I should tell you now. Would it be funny? Should I tell you now? Would it be funny? Anything's on the table. As long as it's not gonna get me cancelled on fucking Twitter. Uh, well...

[01:20:26] It's about a really not great relationship between an older male and an underage male. Fuck yeah. So, it's basically my life. Me and my scoutmaster. A scoutmaster? I'm just joking. My scoutmaster is a lovely dude. I'm sorry. That felt bad to say. I should have made something up. Like... Something else. Give people a warning. Before you see stuff like that.

[01:20:56] He'll never know. There is somebody from Boys... Me and Phillip went to the same Boy Scout troop, and they're... Our friend listens to this show. So he's like, oh! Wait! Hold on! Yeah, don't worry about it. False alarm. Please put the phone down. Don't have to call. Um, yeah. So, that's why people laugh, because it's really uncomfortable. Perfect. I mean, if anything, I am familiar with making people uncomfortable. Same. It's all good.

[01:21:25] So, my history and preconceptions. I'm pretty sure this is probably my first Tales game as well. I played a lot of them, and we had this conversation before where I was like, uh, whatever the fuck game you were talking about, and I looked it up, and I was like, I recognize these characters, so I must have played this. Yeah. I've played so many fucking games in my life now that I have lost the memory of the majority of them. Fair. Especially when they're long-running series like this that I never really directly engaged with, for the most part.

[01:21:55] It's because they all start blending together in my head. Oh, yeah. Um, yeah. Yeah, I get that. So, I definitely played this game because I remember Genus, and I remember seeing his stupid-ass weapon. And going like, this isn't... His Kadami. This isn't Final Fantasy VII with the dude with the machine gun arm, and I want... Or Final Fantasy VIII with the pistol revolver sword? Come on. Yeah. This guy's got a stupid baby toy. Yeah.

[01:22:25] That girl has Frisbees. I hate this. So, I mean, I don't know. I don't remember what I thought, but I did remember the beginning of the game. I remember these characters. I probably was too stupid to play it, so I just could never progress. I just didn't know where to go, I bet. You were just a baby back then, so that's fair. Just a girl. I was just a girl. So, uh, that's it. But, um, I've played a lot of Tales games since then. I beat Tales of Hearts R. I've played Tales of Grace's F, I think you were talking about. I've played that.

[01:22:52] Um, I mean, go look at my PlayStation trophies, I guess. I definitely beat Tales of Hearts R because I played the Vita quite a bit back then. Um, and you hated that, you hate that game. I liked that game, but I don't, uh, remember much. I think I just liked it because it was on the Vita, really. Yeah. Yeah. Because I don't remember, I don't remember what the story was. A lot of the time, I would be playing, I would be at work. I used to work for the city, like a contractor thing. Mm-hmm. And, uh, I would just be in the back of the truck just playing for, like, 20 minutes.

[01:23:22] And then, like, we would get to the place we're going to. And then I'd, you know, I don't think I retained anything from the story. Yeah, that makes sense. I just played it as a grindy game. Yeah, Hearts R, um, it, I'm not saying that I hate it, uh, but I just felt very underwhelmed by it.

[01:23:42] I didn't like the weapons mechanics because, um, you have basically the same weapon throughout the game, but you can, um, upgrade it through a certain system and then it turns into a different weapon. Like one might, like you start out with just a regular sword, let's say, and then you upgraded it. Yeah. Yeah, basically.

[01:24:10] And you upgraded it with a certain system and then it could change into, like, a elemental type blade. So, like, a fire sword thing or whatever. And it was like... I don't know how to say fire. Meh. Yeah. Fire. Fire. It's a, it's a borrowed word. Um. Yeah, the Japanese didn't have fire before America showed up. That's right.

[01:24:40] We invented it, you know. Um. We showed up on our bows and they were like, what the fuck? What is that? We've just been using the light of the moon this whole time. Um. Yeah, so, I, I was underwhelmed with that and the characters themselves weren't, like, super compelling to me. Um. I mean, I beat the game. I played the whole way through. Um. But, yeah. It was just... I don't know. I don't know. You didn't like boy?

[01:25:13] I don't know. I mean, and this is the weird thing, and it feels like kind of a repeated trope in a lot of ways because you see it multiple times in Tales of Symphonia, but you also see it here in Hearts R where the main girl, Kohaku, she loses pieces of her soul.

[01:25:38] And so she becomes soulless and thus doesn't have a personality. Man, the people who make Tales games really like their women silent. Submissive and can battle well. Oh, I thought you were going with breedable. I was like, oh, I know this one. More like yeetable. Yeetable. So, yeah, it's just a weird little trope that seems to be popping up in older games. They haven't done that recently.

[01:26:09] Yeah, the fucking Tales of Arise, they won't stop yapping. Yeah! They're yapping all the time. They won't stop with the personality on those gals. No shit. I did. When I played Tales of Arise, I started it in Japanese, and there's so much talking that, and this was way before I was learning Japanese, but there was so much talking, and it was like during action and shit that's happening. I'm like, they will have full-on conversations in the middle of battles, and I'm like, I can't do the Japanese.

[01:26:38] I can't do it because I can't. Like, I can watch a cutscene and read the subtitles, but if I'm fucking actively trying to survive, that's crazy, dude. Yeah, because you're still kind of missing some of the personality and interactions with everyone. Yeah. Because they will. You'll walk through town or like a dungeon or whatever, and just a little conversation's going off. And it's like, oh, okay, I've got to pay attention to this. You don't.

[01:27:08] Most of them are nothing. Most of them are. No, there's just so much. Sometimes they'll be like, hey, we need to go to the dock. I'm like, bitch, yeah, we just had this conversation. We've got to go to the dock. What do you mean? Why are you repeating yourself? But it's, I mean, there's like subtle evolution that you can catch on in Tales of Arise with those. Like when you're. I'm just joking, by the way. I like the skits. I know. But like when you're,

[01:27:38] you're further into that game with, oh gosh, Shion and, I keep wanting to call them Elph. Bernie. Bernie. Sure. And they, they are building a better relationship, a stronger relationship. If Shion dies, Elphin, that's his name, Elphin, like just screams passionately, like, no,

[01:28:08] you know, like, and it's just like, oh, you know, you can kind of see. That was really passionate. I'm not going to like scream, scream. My neighbors are going to think something's wrong, but no, like he yells at it. If there's somebody that can do some editing magic, can you just edit in that note she did whenever she dies? No. I do that all the time when I'm like, if I don't, if I don't get a kill this round, I'm going to scream at the top of my lungs.

[01:28:36] I'll do that within a group of randoms on siege and I'll die. And I'll just be like, ah, it's not funny to anyone but me. Yeah. I mean, it's very impassioned. I can tell. But yeah, so it's like stuff like that. That's, um, I don't know. I like it. I like it, but that's also Tales of Rise and not Symphonia. So, yeah. So I played a rise, obviously, as we've been talking. And, uh, I also played Vesperia.

[01:29:05] Vesperia is the first one I really fucking went in on. So that was before the Vita one. Um, so it was probably the first one I beat. So I beat Vesperia and then I probably beat Graces. And then I played the Vita one after that. And then I rise way later down the road. Oh yeah. And so. Way later. You missed a few more. Just a few. So, I did a little, uh, post over on, this is Blue Sky, I think. Let me go look and make sure there's nothing going on.

[01:29:35] Nope. Nothing else. I just asked, uh, how many of you played Tales of Symphonia? And then what game is the goat? So, we got two replies from Thrak. One from Thrak. This is, uh, from the 3DO experience uh, over at the Superpod Network. And he says, he played bits of Symphonia, Vesperia, and Arise. Fucking copycat. Wow. Get your own Tales games. Play fucking Zillia, dude. Play something else. Play, get your own fucking game.

[01:30:06] Get off my fucking turf. He says, all three are pretty strong. Also, don't let Bill go on about Abyss. You'll regret it. Sure. And then I said, what does Bill, this is Bill from also the 3DO experience and games and collecting podcast. But he's like, uh, what does Bill, I said, what does Billicus have anything to do against the best RPG of 2023? Which is not when this game came out. Not at all. Uh, I, I, who goes on the internet and just tells lies? Uh, but, uh, it's all truth,

[01:30:36] right? Thrax says, Tales of the Abyss is his number two game of all time, beside, behind only Persona 4 Golden. Wow. Which I didn't know. I thought he was going to be, I think Tales of Arise is like a contentious title for the Tales fandom, but I don't really understand why. I know there's like two different groups of dev, probably devs, or maybe just the, the head dude. That, cause they, there's like two different Tales styles, right? Yes, very much so.

[01:31:06] Like the Zillia guys do their own thing and the Vesperia guys do their own thing. I think those, that's the divide, right? Um, like, uh, what was his face? Baba used to be the leader for the Tales games and like, oversee everything. On a first name basis with him? Yeah. Like, we're, we're like this. She's doing the thing with her hands where she's like putting that finger into the hole.

[01:31:35] That's why I know so much about Tales. Um, so, he oversaw everything practically from the beginning and it wasn't until, um, he stepped down, went somewhere else to like, I think Square Enix or something. Um, and then the, uh, guy who oversaw, I think it was God Eater or something like that,

[01:32:04] came and stepped in to, um, direct, the Tales of Arise is his first. So, we're kind of seeing a new era of Tales. Um, that is not Hideo Baba. Good. Perfect. Perfect. Um, so, you know, like I think Tales fans are, um, they're afraid of newness, which is weird because Tales is all about

[01:32:34] changing things up with battle systems, with stories, with obviously characters and stuff like that. So, I don't even know why you're a fan of Tales if you don't like change, but they'll just bitch and complain about just about any, anything different. Yeah, go play a game that never changes like Yakuza. Fucking idiot. Yeah. That game's the same every time. You neurospicing bitches. Yeah. I'm not gonna lie, uh, probably 60% of my disimpassionment

[01:33:03] while playing this game was because Like a Dragon, Pirate, Yakuza, and Hawaii is out and I'm just watching my friends play it from the, I'm literally Squidward looking through the blinds. Wah. Ah, I wanna be in Hawaii. Ah. Well, you get to now after this podcast. I gotta be this game eventually. Be a free man. Yeah, you will eventually, but it's not as, um, pressing as it was. Yeah.

[01:33:33] Or maybe I'll just get pneumonia or something. I don't know. Oh, yeah. Um, oh, we got one more write-in from Aaron from Superpod Saga. Also, Superpod Network. Look at our bros. Everybody, scratching my back. I love that. I'm not doing anything to contribute. I'm just hanging out at the house playing video games, scratching my nuts. Uh, he says, Symphonia was the first one I ever played. Played it on the GameCube as a kid. Mm-hmm. And I loved it so much that I'd skip school to play it. Dude, it was an addiction back then. It really was.

[01:34:04] He goes on to say, I hadn't played it since then. I think Vesperia is still my favorite. That story is rad as hell. Pizza slice. Nice. What do you think he means by that pizza slice? I don't, I have no idea. I think he just, it's a slice of pie. I don't know. I don't know what that means. I don't know. I've been saying this a lot lately, but it's like, I think that, I complain about kanji and Japanese, like in the Japanese language. I feel like emojis are becoming kanji for English,

[01:34:34] but for everyone also. So I think that that's the kanji for cowabunga, dude. Oh, okay. You know what? Turtle's reference. I get it. Yeah, that's fair. What's a turtles reference? What does that mean? Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I don't know. I don't, I don't watch anime. Okay, it's fine. That's fine. It's fine. We're fine. Everything's fine. But yeah, so Vesperia is sick. I think Vesperia is probably my favorite too because it's probably the one I, I mean, besides Arise,

[01:35:03] which is the last one I played and it was kind of semi-recent, I think Vesperia is the one I kind of know the story of the most, which is hardly any, but I just remember like the dogs, the dog is there, you get to play as a dog with a sword. Very cool. Very. And that was before Pokemon ever came out with Sword and Shield, so Tails did it first, baby. Yeah, I think about, I always think about Metal Gear Solid 5. You know about the dog, Diamond Dog? Yeah. He like fucking jumps on, he'd be like, he'd be like, hey,

[01:35:33] kill that guy. And then the dog would be like, okay. And he runs up, like he sneaks up to him, jumps onto his shoulders, like with his paw, he stands on his shoulders, he bites a, he bites a knife in his vest, pulls it out with his mouth and then stabs him in the neck with his mouth. Brutal. It's so cool. Brutal. That's cool. Not gonna lie. Then he does a backflip off of him. I'm not making this up. No, I believe it. I believe it. Okay, because I am making it up. Oh.

[01:36:03] Why do I trust you now? Did I send you that video of the dude, like farming speech levels on, on, on his friends? No. Have I seen that video? Oh, goddammit. Hold on, we gotta, I gotta show you this. I might edit it into the podcast. Okay, fantastic. I'm here for it. Alright, watch this. This is great. Oh, it's beeping the lemon. Nice shirt. Nice pants, guys. Oh, thanks, man. Thanks, dude. You guys are so welcome. What the hell? Okay, what's going on? Did you just use us to level up your speech? I don't know what the fuck

[01:36:33] you guys are talking about. Hmm, okay. That was weird. Okay, what is that? That's a bar. There's a bar above his head. I see it too. I don't think so. No, though, I see it again. I see the bar again. He's using us to level up his speech. That's literally what I just did to you. Truly. I feel used. Anyway. That's beautiful. I love that. That was a nice little break from reality. That really was. It was just a guy lying to his friends and then the Skyrim. I mean, I'm probably going to put it in there

[01:37:02] or I'm going to cut this whole thing. But so it's like he's lying to them and when they believe him his speech goes up above his head but they can see the bar. So like, what is that? Like, why does it go? Keep quiet. Keep popping up. And he keeps like staring into the camera every time it happens. That's probably the part you like the most. Yeah. Just immediately. It's really good. At the very end, he's like, I need 20 bucks and then he pick boxes it. Like, where did you steal this from?

[01:37:35] That's so good. I loved it. Yeah. Really stupid. What are we talking about? Something brought that up. Oh, I lied about lying about lying. I got it. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. That was a lot. The dog does indeed do that. It does knife the thing. I was lying about lying. Okay. Hours played. I mean, this isn't super important because I was sick and I kept falling asleep with this game open but I mean, I could go look real quick or maybe I can't. Why is my... I don't know. Just throw out a number. I'll believe it apparently.

[01:38:07] My thing is not opening up the game. My true achievements. Oh, there it goes. I just had to complain about it. That's the magic. Yeah, that's the thing. Uh, 54, 55 hours is what it says. Okay. Probably should be done with the game by now but like I said, I fell asleep with this game just on a couple of times on the couch, I mean. Yeah. I was going to ask how many do you have but you don't have an Xbox so you don't know. I don't. I don't have an Xbox but, um,

[01:38:37] like how many hours have I logged into? What would you guess? Yeah. Or are you playing it on, you said you played it on like fucking everything, didn't you? Yeah, pretty much. I remember my, cause originally I, I beat it on GameCube um, and so I think I put about 92 hours into the game. No, I was expecting. I was expecting a little bit more. I mean, I guess you could speed run it since you know

[01:39:07] what the hell's going on. Um, I mean, I guess I could but when it comes to the puzzles especially, um, further into the game I'm like, uh, how do I do this again? A lot of puzzles. We'll get into that in a second. Yeah. So, uh, we got our Steam reviews here. Uh, we're gonna take, take turns reading some of these. Some of them are pretty funny. Um, I'll read the first one just so you got the format. So, Pop Dat recommends this game

[01:39:36] with 49 hours on record for at the time of the review. And it says, as a kid I traded my copy to a friend for Super Monkey Ball. I was later diagnosed with clinical depression. All right. All right. Good job, dude. Rip Pop Dat. Sorry about that. You wanna get the next one? Yeah. Yeah. character name also recommended it with 280.8 hours on record.

[01:40:06] That is a lot, my dude. What were you doing? Customization? Mods. Nude mods, probably. Probably. Um, and they said 18 years to find you can switch characters mid-battle by pressing Y and start. That's how I found out was reading that review. There you go. I was just playing as my boy repeat, what's his name? Lloyd? Yeah. Lloyd Mayweather? Lloyd-o.

[01:40:36] All right, so Dadloquium writes in with 56 hours on record, recommends Demon Fang! Demon Fang! Demon Fang! Demon Fang! Demon Fang! It goes on for like a million times. A million times. And you know what? You could do double Demon Fang and cut that in half. So, multiple of them were saying Demon Fang! Demon Fang! Acquired skill! Double Demon Fang! Yeah, but honestly, in the very beginning, that's accurate.

[01:41:06] So, a lot of this was the a lot of them were similar to this, but this one's funny because it says read more. Yeah, and it's just Demon Fang. Yeah, it really does go on for like fucking 65,000 more times. Okay, and Scurps with 40 hours in also recommended it and said named a tree 10 out of 10. I don't get this reference, but figured you might. Yeah,

[01:41:36] yeah, that's at the very end. It's it's fine. You'll get there eventually. I won't spoil anything. I already got the name. I'm not gonna tell you what the name is. It's Adolf. Hitler. Adolf. No, no, no. What are you, crazy? Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Dude! Okay, hold on. I'm referencing a fucking video now. Have you, did I send you that video? I sent you that video, right? No, I don't think you have. It's the video of somebody,

[01:42:06] somebody's playing Marvel Rivals. It's at the very end and he's like trash talking. Have I not sent you this either? You have not. You have been slacking. I fucking guess so. I don't even, I don't think I have this like saved. I like, I like screen record a lot of videos for the listener at home. I just screen record them and then send them to people, the recorded version. Oh, okay, yeah, fair, fair, fair. But this one, I'm pretty sure I only have like the Twitter videos.

[01:42:35] So I'm gonna have to find it. You can access the Twitter, right? Uh, yeah, I think I have that somewhere. Okay, yeah, I, I do. Okay. Wait, you have the video? No, I have Twitter. okay. Or X, formerly known as Twitter. Are we still doing that? Is that what? No, no, absolutely not. All right, here, check this out. The guy's name is Nadeshot. Oh, wait, that looks really bad,

[01:43:05] bro. Ooh, shit. Ooh. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Oh, that's what I get for talking shit, bro. Oh, my God, dog. Anyway, so what happened in that clip? I don't know if you caught on, but he's, he's in the chat. He's saying GG shitters. Yeah. But he's trying to get around the, he's trying to get around the sensor filter.

[01:43:34] So he's like S1, TT, 3, RS. The important part is at the end, it's 3RS. So, ERS. And so when he hits enter, it says GG, asterisk, asterisk, asterisk, asterisk, 3RS. So it looks like he just dropped the N-bomb. And, and he's just like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Oh, like he is, it just looks like the N-word. It's so,

[01:44:06] it's so, because you can see the fucking fear on him. Like, he's like, I'm going to get canceled forever. Just look up, look up, nades, nades shots, trash talk, and horrible rivals backfired. If you go on our Twitter, it's retweeted on there. It's not that far down. I mean, like, just look up in my Twitter. You can do searches on accounts. Just type in, like, what did I say? Let's see exactly what I said. I said, bro, LMAO. Just like that.

[01:44:35] It is so funny. Okay. Anyways, nades shot, trash talk. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Um, am I reading this one? Xana dude recommends 54 hours. And he says, these small people made me cry. Fair. Uh, also same. Uh, let's see. And Zach old black with 77 hours. Also recommended it and said,

[01:45:03] Colette's voice actor is too close to the damn mic. So if you're going to play that in the game, please take your headphones off or speakers down when she talks. Um, yeah, you know, that's kind of always been a thing since the original. So, uh, deal with it. Colette's just deep throat in the mic. Luckily for a little while, she's not talking. That's true. She is very quiet. She's doing the disturbed thing. And you get some sweet relief. Wow.

[01:45:33] I was thinking, oh, oh, oh. Yo, it's so funny. Cause there's this one tweet that just, it was just said, or it wasn't a tweet. It was like a YouTube short and it was like gay disturbed. Be like, oh, oh, and it's like the same noise. It's the same noise. I mean, it is. Oh, gay disturbed would be like, uh, Borat Obama said recommends 48 hours. He says,

[01:46:02] this game is good. Actually, I lied. It's bad. Actually, I lied the second time. It's actually good. That's funny. I didn't, I didn't plan that. No, that's beautiful. I love that. It's a reference to a thing in the game that is highly memed in the community. Um, yeah, we'll get to that later. Will we, is this a thing in the thing? Because that's literally, literally what I just did to you with the dog, with the diamond dog. you really did.

[01:46:31] You really did do that to me. You, you loided the hell out of me. Um, yeah, it's, it's really, it's a really memed thing in the tales community. Um, because of that scene where Lloyd is trying to psych Colette out. Cause she's starting to go on this journey. Um, and because of it, she's sacrificing herself and thus slowly loses her humanness. Humanness as women do,

[01:47:00] as we do get relationships with men. They, and the men lose their jobs and they're on the couch playing video games and napping. And the woman takes care of everything. History repeats itself over and over. Um, take notes, Elon Musk. All right. We're gonna, I'm crashing out. We, let's talk about this fucking game. Yeah, let's do it.

[01:47:31] So we're already talking. We talked about a couple of the, yeah, just two hours in. Yeah, we're doing great. Uh, so we got our characters here, our main characters, Loido, which is what they say in Japanese. Loido. How did they say Irving? Who? Irving. Like Lloyd Irving is his full name. I didn't even know that. So, I mean, Oh, okay. They probably said it at the very beginning and I just never, and they never did again. Okay, cool. Um,

[01:48:00] I think he's a precocious little boy. Um, no, he, he is very, um, firm in his morals, if that makes sense. Like he, he's a good lad, if not misguided, a little, sometimes, a little hot headed, little, um, exuberant. I don't know. Uh, he's, he's, I mean, he's, he's got that main character energy, you know? Yes. I mean,

[01:48:30] he's the main character. It makes sense. It checks out. He got his two swords. Uh, double swords. That's neat. Neat having two swords. Um, yeah, I don't know. He's kind of cool. He's just like the silly dumb guy. He's very dumb. Yeah. Uh, this game being old, I can't hold it too much against it, but the game being old, there's not a whole ton of characterization that happens, which is super jarring to me sometimes. And I'll, I'll talk about it probably a little bit later,

[01:48:59] but it's like a lot of things that happen. It's like, it'll be a tragic thing. It's like, Oh, this thing, this thing that happened, we're sad anyway. And then they go, you know, that's how the whole, but it's an older game. So that's just kind of how games were back then. I'm very pampered by like tales of arise where like they will linger on the sad moment for like a while. And then they'll have tons of dialogue about the sad moment. It's like,

[01:49:26] I'm used to just dwelling in the fucking misery, you know? I mean, if they did that back then, because like playing the GameCube game, it came on two discs. So if we had any more like dwelling on the thing, that thing would be like a five disc game, like truly, it really had to be, well, I'm really sad this happened. So anyways,

[01:49:50] we've got to do this thing because otherwise we'd just be here for 500 hours playing this game. And you would be even more upset. So like, I kind of get it. And also, I mean, they definitely did hone those concepts later on in the games. So yeah, this is a bit of a rough start, but still a popular game.

[01:50:20] Still doing the thing. I don't think, I don't think it's that rough of a start, but yeah, it's just harder to, harder to, harder to approach if you're, if you don't have the nostalgia for it. Yeah. I mean, it's, it would be hard for someone that came into the series later on. Like, I wouldn't,

[01:50:45] I'd say in the Zestiria to arise era, it'd be hard to start there and then go back to Tales of Symphonia and be like, oh, this is really, really jarring. If you've started like me from Tales of Symphonia, then it's like, okay, I can go through all of these iterations and all of these like different stories and be fine.

[01:51:13] And also be able to go back without a problem because I can play Tales of Symphonia, no problem. It's just great. You know? Yeah. The game, the game functions. Um, it's, it's, it's similar to something, this is kind of like topical right now because like by the time this come, by the time this episode comes out, the announcement for Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 and 4 will have happened. And if it's not coming out this year, my suicide will also have happened because it would completely ruin my Metacritic drop.

[01:51:41] So let this be my manifesto, Tony Hawk. You're the first name going in the, on those, on the note. If it's a, it's not coming out. Oh boy. Okay. Okay. But what am I even saying? The, uh, so it's like whenever you play, like if you, if the first Tony Hawk game you played was like American Wasteland or like even thug, like Tony Hawk's underground, it'd be insanely difficult to go back to Tony Hawk, even like Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, which is one of like the most critically acclaimed ones. And then being like, Oh shit, I can't revert. Like,

[01:52:10] like how do you combo? How do you combo at all? I mean, I think reverts in two. There's, there's like different things that you can't do. It's like, like they slowly iterated on the formula a little bit. Like they added revert and then they added like stalls and like fucking, I think stalls was in two as well. It's, I don't know. You know, not a spin. They added the wall plant. Wall plant is actually huge. Um, yeah. Uh, it's difficult to go back whenever you have all of these like modern, uh, bells and whistles.

[01:52:40] And this game definitely suffers from that. If you're having a, if you have a hard time playing nostalgia games or not nostalgia games, but you know, older ones, just older ones. Yeah. In general. Um, Colette, the next character, this character was interesting because she turns into a robot for a little while. I mean, not like a literal robot for those who haven't played. Um, but as most people aren't listening. Oh, okay. Well then I'll say it anyways, cause fuck you. Um,

[01:53:09] she loses a piece of her humanity every time they complete a, um, what would you call it? Like not necessarily a dungeon, but a trial. Yeah. A trial. So, and she gains, um, quote unquote angel, um, abilities and. Angel juice. Yeah. So she, her,

[01:53:35] her mission is to become a complete angel and save her world of silver on. Um, and so she has to do that by losing her humanity slowly, but surely. So eventually she just becomes this really silent, um, like no personality drone kind of thing. which is really weird because I talked about this before,

[01:54:03] but tales is the tale series is famous for the characters never shutting the fuck up ever, ever, ever. And so whenever you in battle, especially there's like, remember demon fang, demon fang, demon fang. Like, that's literally what you hear the whole time, but there's four of you doing that. And so, um, having Colette like doing a move, cause she does like special, like when you do like made mag, mage moves, it will like pull the camera to the person using it for a second. I don't know why it should,

[01:54:33] it should just do it. It just likes it. It just, yeah, you know, uh, but when Colette did, when Colette does it, she doesn't say anything and you just get so, especially if this is not your first tales game, you just get so used to hearing the words. So like when that happens for, for like this, like relatively small amount of time that Colette is mute, it's like jarring almost. It's like, it's something wrong with my game every time it happened. Yeah. It's eerie because like, especially when one of her moves that she does, um,

[01:55:01] when she's practically catatonic outside of fighting, um, one of the moves that she does is judgment. And in that, like you can see her, like she does all of these like hand symbolism stuff. Yeah. And, but she's not saying anything when she's casting it. And it is the most eerie thing to watch. You know, like those political, whenever they do the,

[01:55:28] the political rallies and then there's the hand sign interpreter. Yeah. Yeah. The ASL thing. Yeah. Yeah. What is that? Like BDSM? Oh my gosh. Uh, close. Beer's getting to me. Yeah. Clearly. Uh, so genius. Yeah. Genius. Um, he is the really smart, but like super bratty of,

[01:55:57] of the, the team. Um, he's fine. He's a solid, like spell caster. This dude is, this dude has some flashy magic. Like, he does. Cause everyone else, like Colette, I mean, well, Colette, you know, judgment was pretty cool, but like angel feathers, it's like, okay, this is all right. But then genius is like, the world is exploding. I'm like, Oh shit. And it's like earthquake, but also sand storm quicksand.

[01:56:28] I'm like, Oh God, what the fuck is happening? Please stop. Can I be in there? Is it okay for me? Tell me when it's my turn. Yeah, no, he's, he's legitimately like, I think he was one of the, um, characters that I kept in, in battle most of the time. Um, like I'd always have him and his sister, which we'll get to next, but yeah, he's a solid character. Um,

[01:56:59] it's really interesting. A lot of JRPGs, you usually have like a very diverse cast, but for a long time in this game, probably the whole game, I would imagine you have rain and genus who are brother and sister. And they look very similar. Like so similar. You were watching me. I would consistently get them mixed up. Like I thought I was doing something for a rain. I'm like, where the fuck is the healing? And then I realized I was looking at genus as fucking shit. Yeah.

[01:57:27] You have to look really carefully. Cause the hair is like in the up close, like little, um, character boxes. Yeah. The fucking 12 pixels. Yeah. It's hard. It is hard to kind of distinguish them. Yeah. So while we're talking about both of them, um, my favorite part about genus is how he get the fucking shit slapped out of him all the time by his sister. I'm like, yeah, in his ass. Fucking hit him. Yes. That's how you improve personality. Yeah. Uh,

[01:57:57] yeah. Yeah. She fucking slapped the shit out of Lloyd too. Sometimes. Oh yeah. Because the, I mean, they were practically a sibling relationship too, just because of how close everyone is in the village where you start out. So yeah. Rain definitely had her hands full with those two. All right. Next guy, Kratos. Kratos. From, uh, the God of War. He's in here. Yeah. He's in there being a God, you know,

[01:58:27] uh, Kratos is, he's. Oron from Final Fantasy 10. Yes. If Oron was bad. Because the whole thing about Final Fantasy 10, when you see Oron is like, this guy bad, that seems bad. And then Kratos is like, you're kind of sketchy. And then he's like, yeah, cause I am. And then he fucking, peace. And then he fucking, he's like, I'm out. Bye. Um, I know there's like, because you haven't finished the game,

[01:58:56] I'm trying not to like, say too much. Um, it's probably fine. Is it, is it, you won't be like, super. Upsetty spaghetti. No, probably not. Okay. Um, because like, he, he quote unquote, betrays the group, leaves, and comes around. And you're thinking like, oh, he's like,

[01:59:25] super enemy after all. And we've got to be aware of him and all of that. But he's, he's still got some backstory left. Yeah. He keeps coming back around and he's like, hey, uh, look out for this. And everyone's like, why is he helping us? And I'm like, well, can we really? Yeah. There's probably something going on. Yeah, there, there is, there is. And ultimately it's, um, really interesting.

[01:59:55] Yeah. I think a lot of, um, characters, backstories get more interesting near the end. Um, it's just, I won't give it away. I won't give it away. Yeah. Tell me what you want. Tell me what you want. really want. Keep it up. Yeah. Glad you picked up on that. What else putting down? Of course. I'm here for 90s music reference. So the next person, Sheena. Sheena, my girl. I love her. The Asian.

[02:00:25] We're going to Japan to Neo-Tokyo or whatever the fuck it's called in this game. It's literally like, it's literally Mount Fuji. Yeah. Mount Tokyo and Mount Fuji. It's mountain range Fuji. Isn't it? Something like that. Uh, well, her last name is, uh, Fuji by Yashi. So, um, nice. Well, that was the thing because she, the whole thing at the beginning of her like story in her town is like, I,

[02:00:53] I called it because as soon as we get back to the town, everyone's like, this is Tanaka and this is Yamaguchi. And I'm like, why is her, why is Sheena's name so fucking stupid? And everyone else has like Japanese names. And then Sheena's like, yeah, everybody has two names. It's like, Oh, you chose Sheena. What's wrong with Sheena? It's not, it's just so weird. It's like, you know, it's like Craig, Craig, Devin,

[02:01:21] and I'm trying to think of a fucking completely different name. Now I'm like fucking drawing a blank. Oh, you know what I mean? I mean, it's like, those are my friends. And so it's like, one of these stands out. You know what I mean? One of things is not like the other. Uh, yeah. I mean, fair, fair. I mean, I'm sure like, I mean, in the English it's spelled like S H E E N A.

[02:01:49] I don't know if like the Japanese, it would be more like S H I I N A, or am I just making shit up at this point? I don't know. I don't remember because I was like, I didn't have con, I didn't have the Kana happening. Fair. Fair. I just had English. I think most games you have to like switch the console to, to the region of Japan in order to get the language to switch like the written language. Fair. Okay. There's not a lot of games that actually let you do that.

[02:02:18] That was a whole thing last year with Phillip. Cause Phillip's been learning Japanese for a while now. And he was keeping track of games that would let him switch the fucking console, whatever. He just switched his Xbox to play to Japanese though. So what a nerd. Okay. Fair. Fair. I mean, you've got to, I mean, you do, you have to immerse yourself. So that's valid. Um, but no, I love her. I love her aesthetic. Um, they're big old boobies. Yeah. Good change of pace.

[02:02:49] Good change of pace. From what? I don't know. You know, all the covered up girls, dude. Everyone's covered up. All this modesty. How dare you? Yeah. We don't, and it takes even longer to get to the fucking muscular sexy man, dude. It takes a long time to get to that guy. I know, but I mean, that's what the DLC is for is all of the, the fun little outfits, like the swimsuit outfits that they have. Nice. Just solid. Solid. Solid,

[02:03:19] solid A plus for me. A plus plus. All right. So next person, Xellos. We're talking like this guy. We're really, we're really objectifying everybody. Like he likes to do. Yeah. He is the playboy upon playboys. Um, um, probably just about any tales character. I would say I'm very comfortable saying that. Um, he is very out there to, um, talk to the ladies.

[02:03:49] Oh no.

[02:03:51] Oh no.

[02:04:19] Xellos being the most playboy of playboys. Um, and that, like, I, I really loved the little, um, thing that they did where you can switch to Xellos as the walking character in towns and talking to any ladies. And they just give you shit. They give you money. They give you potions or apple gels or whatever kind of gel that you need.

[02:04:48] Cause he just flirts. He's a flirty boy. My favorite thing was I walked up to a noticeably like four year old child. And I was like, this isn't going to work. And then he's like, Hey little girl. And then she gave me her allowance. I was like, Oh yeah, it works. It's really, I'm really not built like this, I guess. Uh, yeah, I don't know. He just, he's got the charm. Uh, surprisingly for, he's got the look guy. Yeah. That's,

[02:05:18] it's probably, it's probably died. Maybe, maybe. Uh, so we got Priscia as well. Priscia. Yes. Whatever. I don't think so. I, I haven't spent a lot of time because Priscia is there for a little bit and then she vanishes. And so I, I have not spent hardly any time.

[02:05:44] She's the least amount of time I've spent with any of these characters besides the very last one who I don't even know who that is. And so she's neat. She, so at, so at one point we had Priscia who is an emotionalist, basically an android. And we also had Colette being an emotionalist android, basically. And so we had the same two characters. And I was like, this is bizarre because like, this is a choice, you know? Cause like I said,

[02:06:14] RPGs generally want this like wide variety of characters. Now they are very different once they, they both get their personalities back around at the same time. And then it's like, they started to become their own characters, but I don't know anything about this. Cause this character just, I don't even remember why she vanishes, but I, I lost her. Yeah. Um, so basically Priscia has a shocking, tragic backstory to her. And, um,

[02:06:43] more or less she had a, oh my gosh, what do they call it? Now I'm forgetting in the name, the, the stone, like directly embedded in her materia, the, oh my gosh, I almost had it. What the, my fault. I do that. Uh, not the key crest. That's what you need to, yeah, the key crest is what you go and get. Yeah. Uh, symphonia.

[02:07:14] Uh, Oh, I don't even know how to look this up. I'm such an idiot right now. Um, symphonia. What are they called? The things, the things. Uh, I know. Oh, wait, hold on. I have a fucking screenshot. I think someone's talking about it in one of the screenshots. No, X-phere.

[02:07:44] It might be X-sphere. It's something like that. I mean, that sounds like a Final Fantasy thing. I don't know why I'm blanking on it, but yes, X-sphere. Yes. Um, so she has an X-sphere directly embedded into her without a key crest, which is very bad. And, um, that kind of contributes to her, uh, catatonic state in a way. I mean, it's not really catatonic since she's still moving around, but she's,

[02:08:14] um, emotionless and stuff. Um, so, and it turns out that, she is, um, um, being used by some not so great people. Um, basically, uh, Dr. What is Dr. Wily's counterpart in Mega Man? Yeah. Yeah. Basically that guy. Um, and in the game, his name is Rodile.

[02:08:44] Uh, he is part of the Cardinal four. And he's just not a great guy. Not great. And he, um, uses Prisea to basically kidnap Colette as well. Yeah. It's literally what I'm in the middle of in the story. Yeah. My Colette is missing as well. Very sad. Womp womp. So yeah, she's, um, not,

[02:09:13] not great at, at the whole personality thing, but Gina's low key has a crush on her. And that's something. High key. High key. High key. But she don't know that. She doesn't. And she's like, she, but it's weird. Cause she's like six, seven million years old. She's that anime. Yeah. Yeah. But, but he's like, Hey dude, I don't care. I'm like fucking, I'm like 11. It's okay. Yeah. It's fine. It's Boku no Boku. We look the same.

[02:09:43] So it is basically is. Um, is she really aging if she's emotionally empty the whole time? I don't know. That's what keeps us young, you know? Yeah. So one of the cool things we've mentioned quite a bit, uh, just real quick, I'll interject like the, the characters are constantly leaving and coming out into the party. I don't know if you guys have noticed, but there's a lot of fucking characters. So it's like fucking 23 of them or something.

[02:10:12] It's basically options. Uh, fucking, what is that game with a million characters? I, I, it was in my brain. Sudokin. Oh, sweet. And then sweet. And then, Sue, Sue, Sue, Sue, Sue, Sue, Sue, Sue, Sue, Sue, Sudoku. Yeah. Stuff like a street fighter move. But, yeah, so these characters are coming, coming in and out. So it was interesting cause it's like, Hannah was talking about, Oh, I always have, uh, genius or rain in my party. It's like, you,

[02:10:42] you can't really have a permanent party because people are in like coming in and out all the time. Yeah. Yeah. That is true. For the most part, you know, it's like you have certain ones that it's like, I tend to like the balance amount, which, um, you know, with the physical fighters and then the, um, mages. And you can still consistently do that pretty well, even if, uh, party members are changing. But yeah, um,

[02:11:12] that does happen a lot in this game as well as puzzles. So many puzzles. So, uh, the next character, we're almost done. The next character, Regal. Yeah. Regal's pretty cool. He, he really hits, he's a lot of check boxes. You know, he's got the foot fetish thing cause he's foot, he's shoeless. We got the BDSM because he's got hand. He comes with his own handcuffs. Yeah. Yeah. Always bound. His favorite pair of handcuffs. He's basically just wearing a potato sack. So it's real easy to get in there. It's like,

[02:11:42] there's a lot of things going on there. It's a long haired man, muscular, he's stoic. He doesn't say much. It's not gonna lie. every girl's type right here. Yeah. Every guy's type. Hey, this is a man's man for the men. Oh, okay. You can have them. It's fine. Uh, so yeah, I don't know anything really about them because I literally just unlocked him. Just Adam. Yeah. Uh, yeah. he's a really cool character, um,

[02:12:11] who may or may not be linked to Prisea. Dun, dun, dun. Um, yeah, even at the beginning, he does kind of have a particular interest in her. Yeah. And you think that's really weird, but it, it gets clarified later. But I think like where you left off, it kind of touches on that just a little bit. Um, but yeah, it,

[02:12:40] he more or less. I don't want to. He is insistent on helping her. Like, yeah. Everyone's like, we should probably do that. And he's like, no, we're doing that. And then everyone's like, yeah, we were going to do it. He's like, okay, that's good. Cause we're going to do that. All right. All right. I don't know why we're talking to this. It's fine. Um, yeah, he, he has his motives, very strong motives and, uh, very strong. Um,

[02:13:11] he's a very repentant character. Um, and he basically is so OP and he vowed to never be OP again. And that's why he keeps his handcuffs on. Cause he vowed to never use them again, just because he is basically, um, Saitama one punch man. I was going to say Deku from, uh, I don't know that show. My hero. Yeah. My hero academia.

[02:13:41] Um, no, he, he's not, he's better than that. Well, yeah, cause Deku doesn't punch because he broke his fucking arms all fucking spaghetti like. Yeah. So there's that. Um, yeah, no, Regal is pretty cool. I just wish, um, he, he doesn't like, I don't know if the, the devs really gave him, um,

[02:14:10] some proper love that he should have for being such a cool character. Well, that's the issue with these JRPGs is that like, there is an inherent bias against the people who come in late because they just inherently have less time on screen. Yeah. Yeah. You just have to have a game where a lot of the characters come in kind of early and this, I'm like fucking unironically at 35 hours in and Regal is just now a part of my party. And there's a dude I've never even seen before that we're about to talk about. So it's like,

[02:14:38] that's probably not wise. The Tales developers, but I don't think, cause it's like, I don't think Arise is like this. No. As severely. Arise, you, you do tend to meet all the party members much faster, but it is also a shorter game too. Thank God. I'm always disappointed when the game is short like that. I'm like, Oh, only 60 hours. What? Meanwhile, I'm over here champion two hour games. I'm like, yes.

[02:15:08] Yes. Yeah. Clearly. We got this, uh, mythos. He looks like a twink. What's going on with this guy? His shirt looks like a butterfly a little bit. Do you care about spoilers or like, no, no. I mean, when I was looking at, when I got his picture, it was like, Oh, this guy's a half elf. And I was like, all right, cool. Yeah. Um, I can't, it's been a long time since I fully got,

[02:15:37] gotten like in beaten the game. So I'm doing this from memory. So I'm probably wrong, but so I'm going to generalize some stuff. So basically, um, they find mythos. And, you know, he, he looks like maybe just a little bit older than genus's age. And he, he was lost and blah, blah, blah, kind of alone. Like, Oh, okay. And the,

[02:16:03] the group decides to kind of help him and him and genus really bond. And like, they become besties. And, um, then it turns out that mythos is the main baddie. Oh, hell yeah. Dun, dun, dun. Um, and, but he looks so nice. Well, don't they all, don't they all look so nice in the beginning? No, Kratos looks like a dickhead.

[02:16:33] And he kind of is a dickhead. I mean, yeah, kind of, but there, there's reasons for that too. I don't know if you thought on to that, uh, or like, you might have. I just figured he was PMSing or something. Oh, that's it. Okay. No, that's not it. Um, yeah. So, so mythos is, uh, like the, the group is like, like, Oh wow. Like, are you named after the,

[02:17:03] the legendary mythos? Turns out he is the original legendary mythos. Um, and he turns into the main bad guy and is basically the reason why everything happens. That was such a, so I have heard his name at least in the story so far a couple of times. Um,

[02:17:33] that there's so, there's a lot of really close parallels to tales, uh, or not tales. I always want to say tales because it's basically a tales game, but, uh, visions of mana. Okay. Yeah. Where that, I mean, slight spoilers, it's not even that big of a deal, but it's like the, there is a legendary character that gets referred to a couple of times. And then that person who's like the savior of the world. And that person is the bad guy for the game at the end. Like, yeah. So it's just, you know, rinse and repeat for some of these JRPGs, but.

[02:18:03] And it even has like the girl, like the girl love interest of the main character. Who's the second party member who uses magic. And they are the person sacrificing themselves to the, to, to, to the mana of the world so that the mana can't, it's literally like, so the, it's like the same story almost with just different, different, uh, yeah. I mean, I really, I really do kind of wish that like in tales of symphonia,

[02:18:31] that Lloyd and Colette were the official canon couple, but they're not. It's probably Sheena, right? Mm-hmm. Well, fuck. Yeah, dude. Hate that for her. No, dude. Hate that for her. go get her. I know. Go get her. It was, it was really obvious at the point that I, cause it was like when you go to get vault or fight vault or you get vault, I don't remember what she does actually. Yeah. But everyone is like, literally everyone you talk to is like, go to her, give her your strength.

[02:19:00] And I'm just like, Oh dude, we're getting laid. I mean, you're not wrong. Like it is canon that Sheena is just like head over heels for him. And I'm just like, but why? It's a double swords. It's gotta be. Yeah. It's gotta be. If he, he's got, he got both hand dexterity. It's like, you know, all that. Think about all the. The slicing and dicing. I was, I was miming backhanding somebody,

[02:19:31] but yeah, I don't really know what I'm talking about. So we're going to go into the combat real quick. And then we're going to do a really quick story over, like tapping into a whole bunch of different parts of the story. The combat is a hack and slash. It's like almost, you see the enemies running around on the overworld and then you touch them and then you go into a fight. That's how most, that's how all the tales games are. This game is very weird because you, I know it's like two and a half hours into the fucking episode, but this is a co-op game. I don't know if we mentioned that ever.

[02:20:00] Yeah. It can be played solo and co-op and it's. The way you play co-op is that, uh, you, you just hook up a second controller and then whenever you go into combat, someone takes over like whoever's in the second spot. And I think you can play four player co-op actually. Yeah. So it was like one person's running around the overworld. And then when you get into a fight, everyone gets to control the characters. And that's kind of really interesting. And I bet that really makes the game easier because it seems like the NPCs just

[02:20:29] kind of hold back because whenever I'm playing Lloyd, I am whooping fucking ass in the fucking fight. And like everyone is like every now and then hitting, you know, but right. And you're just like, come on, can you stop casting barrier? Can you please, please for the love of all that is holy. Heal me. Yeah. Nurse, please. Um, the, uh, the game itself, you, it's like a 3d arena,

[02:20:59] but it's only 2d, which is very obnoxious to a degree, but I understand that it wouldn't work the way it's the, the way the combat works is, um, it takes into consideration the direction in which you're pushing the analog stick. Whenever you use your abilities or you use your basic attack, it does actually change what you're doing. Kind of like a fighting game a little bit, but, uh, it's very simplistic, which is good because you're going to be doing a lot of these fights. And if every single fight was like a fucking,

[02:21:27] a fucking evil level challenge, Marvel versus Capcom two, and you need to pair it. It's like, God damn, God bless you. You know, like, yeah. So you can just get by with smashing the a button the whole time. And it's probably fine. It's kind of cheese in it, but you know, I mean, it was a game that was made back in the day for a stinking game cube. So what do you expect? Um, um, fighting style overall,

[02:21:56] it's not too bad. It's kind of interesting how you, um, learn like characters, learn moves. So fast, like in the beginning, you're just like, Oh, I got it. And you're like, okay, we're doing moves now more moves. Um, but it's, it's good. It's a, it's okay for what the time was. Yeah. I think the, I think the combat system is honestly fine. It's like right up there with kingdom hearts where it's like,

[02:22:26] it's very bare minimum, but there is complexity if you want to add to that. And I was playing. So there's three different styles. There's auto, which I think the game just plays itself. And then there's semi auto where the game will do specific actions. I think I was playing in semi auto where the game will do specific actions where if you, uh, okay. So one of the things that was noticeable is that the game would block for me sometimes. Yes. If I'm not doing anything and I walk into an attack,

[02:22:55] sometimes it would block for me. Another thing is that I had a attack with Lloyd that could chain off of another attack. And I, so I had that attack hot key to neutral B or neutral, whatever it was neutral art button. And then the other, the one I primarily used was the one where he stabs a bunch of times. And that was, that was hot key to down on the art button. And so I would,

[02:23:21] if I would do my full combo and then do down on the art button and then hit the generic auto attack button again, it would do the second art, even though I didn't hit the art button. so there's like random, like little kind of quality of life things that are happening there where the game is like, yeah, he probably wanted to do this, but right. And sometimes it's like whenever you're fighting an enemy that flies, you have to auto attack holding up so that you do an attack going up. And if you don't do that, sometimes the game just does it for you. So it's like,

[02:23:51] that's probably for the best. If you want to like mindlessly like get through the fucking fights, auto, I think you could switch during the fight, right? Or is that a newer tales thing? I'm, you can, um, you definitely can invest. I remember. Yeah. I'm thinking that like in, I'm trying to think back to the game cube version and I'm thinking that you'd have to go like before you're in a fight,

[02:24:19] you'd have to go into the menu and select like auto, semi auto or manual. Um, so I think it's like a bit easier now in the newer, like remake, uh, remake, remastered ones, um, where you can do that easier, like in battle. Yeah. That's how primarily most people are going to be playing this. Yeah. So, I mean,

[02:24:45] I usually set it to semi auto auto. I mean, it automatically was always like by default, they would always set it to semi auto. And that way I could just kind of focus on certain moves and, or like learning certain combat styles without having to remember the block things because I'm not like an expert gamer. And so I don't think about always blocking attacks. I just want to attack back.

[02:25:14] So that was always kind of a nice feature. And also, if you do want to like go just a manual, I think it's called, I don't know. I'm thinking about like car cars now, but, um, you want to go into manual mode. Like generally every single enemy will let you full combo them and then they'll attack you and then they'll let you full comp. So it's like, there's not a whole lot of enemies that are going to punish you. If you decide to attack, it's not dark souls. It's nowhere near dark. It's not. No. Uh, the things I want to go over real quick are just like the over limit,

[02:25:44] the over limit, uh, your character will go Kaioken times 10 with a little black aura around them. And I had no idea what the fuck this did. So I, and so I think in other tales games, they have similar abilities to this and, um, you can just use your art over and over and over again. Right. And that now, and this, they don't let you do that, but apparently according to the wiki, uh, so take it with a grain of salt, but prevents staggering,

[02:26:14] reduces the amount of damage taken by half and shortens the casting type of the spell. I didn't notice any of that. In fact, I would die in over limit sometimes. Like I would just get killed cause I'm going, you're just too reckless. Full ham taro, dude, full send trying to, trying to kill the fucking little slime thing, the little worm I'm fighting. Oh yeah. Die. Uh, the other thing is unison attack, which is neat. Uh, this is a thing where there's like a little bar and then you click in the analog stick and if you connect with the attack on certain enemies,

[02:26:42] there are bosses that just doesn't affect. And I would constantly bitch about that every time it happened. But so, but like, uh, you hit them and then you get to do an art for free for each character. Yeah. I don't know if it's for free. I don't know if it uses the mana or not, but like you can just instantly, everyone uses different arts. And if you do specific combinations with specific characters, they'll do a unison attack, like a special one. Um, I never committed to memory. I would do this on accident. Sometimes every time I did this,

[02:27:11] I would just spin the analog stick, like a fucking Russian roulette chamber, and then just mash the fucking button. But, um, that's basically how it goes for me too. And I use it, uh, it's, it's really cool when it happens, but I, it, it doesn't happen all the time for me. But, all right. So we'll slide up in the story real quick. And, uh, we don't have to do, we're not going to do a whole fucking deep dive. This isn't the mouthwashing episode listener.

[02:27:41] So if you're looking for a fucking well adjusted insight to this game, I didn't even finish it. I don't know if you noticed it. We've mentioned like five times, but so you got that link right there at the top, the IGN walkthrough. Yep. This is where I got a lot of this. So literally I have all of the areas that I've been to, and I have a screenshot from the IGN walkthrough for one screenshot per area. And so we're just going to kind of touch on things, things that we like, things that we didn't like about these little areas. First one is Aselia. Yeah. Yeah. Aselia.

[02:28:12] Um, this is like where you start the little cute little homie, homie town, cute little village. Um, that Lloyd kind of, I wouldn't say takes as his own. I mean, cause he lives outside of the village, but that's where he goes to school. That's where Gina's and rain live and Colette. And so, you know, he, he's basically there. He lives there in a sense. Um, this place dies.

[02:28:41] Yeah. It's really funny. Yeah. It's really funny. The Nazis show up and then everything's on fire. And then everyone points at Lloyd and he falls to his knees and they laugh, not laugh, but like they're angry. They're like, yeah, you're, you're ousted dude. Sean, the nonbeliever. Sean. Um, yeah, he, he gets ousted, um, because they believe, well, I mean, it's really,

[02:29:11] it's fact that like, Asalia has this treaty with, um, the people called the designs, which are basically Nazis. Yeah. Sure. I mean, they're, they're half elves and half elves are, um, discriminated against. So, you know, yay, racism. Wait, are they discriminated against in the other world too? I thought the whole thing was they weren't discriminated against in this world.

[02:29:41] Uh, designs are like, mean, evil, half elf people. And, um, so they are, are discriminated, discriminated against in Silveront. Um, yeah, cause I haven't beaten the game, but I thought the whole, cause there was a whole dialogue when you, the, when you first go to the other area, the other world, that they're like, they're like, they're like, uh, why would we help?

[02:30:11] Okay, hold on. So like you get arrested like 18 times in this area. Yeah. And one of the times they take your half elf, because they're like, Oh fuck, these guys are half elves. We did the blood test and we fucking hocked to it on a fucking, yeah, on a fucking, a Petri dish. And they got the elf gene. Uh, so you go down to the bottom and the fucking elf slaves down there are like, why would we help you? Like, no dude, we're cool. We have elf friends. Yeah. We can say the elf word.

[02:30:40] It's like two different, it's two different worlds. And, um, kind of the, really, the real overview of this is that you have these two different worlds, Silverant and Tethiola. And generally, these two worlds don't know that the other exists. And the journey of regeneration, which is what Colette is chosen to do, is basically a journey to take the,

[02:31:12] the positive, like happy, fun energy that is vital for, uh, the earth to siphon it from the other world and give it to the one that needs it. So in Silverant, cool. Silverant is dying because there's not a lot of that, I guess. It's the mana. Yeah. Talk. I think they say it's the mana, but maybe I, I translated that into my head. Yeah. I mean, that works. That basically is.

[02:31:42] So, um, Colette is the chosen who is given the, the journey to save Silverant and regenerate the world and give it more mana. And that mana, basically, if her journey is successful, um, that mana that Tethiola had is siphoned to Silverant. And then, uh, Tethiola would be in the same position that Silverant is in. So like, it's, um,

[02:32:11] you have a thriving world versus a dying one. And so like, there's just different systems in place and. It's like never an equilibrium. Yeah, never. And that's kind of what everyone decides they want to do is do an equilibrium and stuff. Yeah. We want to figure out how to make both worlds thrive, um, near the end of it. Once they discover that that's the truth. So you have Silverant who is deeply seated in,

[02:32:41] um, race wars in a way. Nice. Woohoo. Tell me more. Um, because designs are, um, trying to farm mana from actual people. Yeah. And concentration camps keep going. Basically. Sounding great. So, you know, it's really, we, we really get in deep right off the bat in this game. Um,

[02:33:09] so they have human ranches is what they call it. It's great. Love it. Um, and so human ranch is what I eat my pizza with. Hmm. Yummy. Very, very full bodied. It's come. Uh, the primary thing with all the, so it's, we got a lot of important questions with the, with the humanitarian thing and the concentration camps.

[02:33:37] But my important question is there's this hole in the classroom of a human that went through the wall, like a cartoon character. What's going on with that? Because obviously Colette, but, um, it's never explained. Or maybe I just didn't do the side quest because there's, this hole appears in multiple places. Yeah. She's just clumsy as fuck. That's half her personality is that she's clumsy and she trips over nothing.

[02:34:01] And she apparently is able to trip so good that an actual shaped hole and things happen when she does that. Falls through walls. Yeah. She falls through walls. I don't know how. That's my, that's my Midwest emo band name. Falls through walls. Falls through walls. I love it. I'm here. Let me know when your first concert is. I will be there. Um, yeah, she, she just falls. She trips. She,

[02:34:30] she's clumsy. Um, there's really nothing to it. Like truly that is just half her personality is being clumsy. And the other half is being apologetic for the inconvenience. So felt. Yeah. So. All right. So after, uh, is, uh, Israelia, we go to Tyriot and the Silveront base. Yeah. And so, yeah, I'm going to mispronounce everything.

[02:35:00] Um, that's what I'm here for. Uh, so Tyriot is a sand place, but I don't really know what happens in there. Besides there's another hole in a wall. And I remembered that. Right. Right. But other than that, there's an in, and that's the only thing I use the sound for. And I fucked off. Uh, but then you go to the Silveront base because you get arrested. Yeah, you do. the diet, the Zions take you in, um, because your Lloyd is ousted from, um,

[02:35:29] the Acelia because he fucked around with the human ranch and found out. And, uh, the Zions set fire to Acelia. And people know that it's Lloyd's fault because the designs announced it. And so he's ousted. Genus goes with them because the rest of the group, like Kratos, Rain, and Colette are already off on the world journey. Yeah, they fucked off. Yeah, they did. Uh,

[02:35:59] Colette lied to Lloyd saying, oh, we're leaving at this time. And they left at a different time. So that way he would stay behind. Um, so after all of that, Lloyd is, is banned from Acelia forever. And so they're like, well, might as well, might as well go on the journey now. So they're trying to catch up with the rest of them. And that's why they go to the desert because that's where they were headed. Anyways, for the first trial. Um,

[02:36:29] and in the process of that, Lloyd does get arrested by the designs or so he thinks. Dun, dun, dun. Um, so he thinks he definitely got arrested. I mean, yeah, but not by designs. That's. Oh yeah. Something about resistance. Is that who these people are too? I don't know. There's like, you go into bases that look like this. There's like three of them and they all look the same. So I don't know. They all look the same. And well, the fact is, is that,

[02:36:58] um, this base that Lloyd is kept at is basically the rebellion. And this rebellion, basically, basically, basically base. Um, and they are very similar to designs, but they're not like, I don't know how to explain it just yet, but they are the, the, a rebellion group and kind of, or the renegades. They call themselves the renegades. Um,

[02:37:29] so Void is then stuck in this space alone. I'm just thinking about the renegades of funk. No, Oh, more, more music. Yeah. Um, you know, just be, you know, humming to myself all the time. Oh, that's good to know. That's good to know. Um, yeah. So he has to find his way out. Genis was let go because, um,

[02:37:57] these renegades slash designs were like, Oh, you know, well, you're like us, so we'll let you go. Um, edit renegades of funk. Every time she says, renegades. Yeah. Just let me say renegades and then edit it. So that way you're the one that says funk at the end of it. That's perfect. Yeah. It'll be like car, you know, carpool karaoke. Okay. That's perfect. Uh, so yeah. Um,

[02:38:28] and that's, I mean, luckily Genis gets let, let's go. Let go. Um, because he was able to find the rest of the group to come back and help save Lloyd. There's another thing too. Cause it was like, she was like, ah, come on. There's so much that happened. Uh, okay. Yeah. All right. All right. Since you're one of us. And that's when you kind of get a hint of like, Oh, what do they mean?

[02:38:57] Genis is one of them. Um, because at that time, Genis is, uh, he believes he's a full elf. He's not spoiler alert. Um, so yeah, anyways, uh, then you fight, um, the boss there at the end of all of that. Like you team up with the rest of the group near the end after running into Ewan, um,

[02:39:25] who's the leader of the renegade funks. And, um, then you, you fight. Oh gosh. What's his name? I can't remember. He's weird looking dude. Spiky hair. Wolverine. He looks like Wolverine in a lot of ways. Um, but yeah, so there's that. And then the ax, yeah. With the big old, I don't know his name,

[02:39:53] but I can't remember his name, but it's a boss fight. Stevenson. Stevenson. Yeah. Renegade funk Stevenson. Um, so yeah, then I mean, and then you, that you hit the trials basically after that. Um, what did you think of this first trial dungeon? The Tyriot ruins. Yeah. Um,

[02:40:22] it was fine. I died to the mimic. I didn't understand what was wrong. Yeah. And then I had to redo everything. Cause that was like the, like the, almost the last thing I did was die to the mimic and then I didn't save. So like, okay, cool. That's great. I'll come back to this tomorrow. Yeah. Fair. No, the mimic sucks. The mimic sucks in here. Cause you're like, Ooh, treasure. Um, and you're just, you're basically just starting out. So it's like, you just, no, it sucks.

[02:40:51] So there's a whole bunch of like little fireplace things you activate and it like raises and lowers shit. And, uh, it, for the most part, you don't need to fuck with it at all. Um, it's all just for some like extra, like, Oh, here's a little life bottle and here's a sword and shit. Yeah. You get some weapons, you get some, I think you get gold too, or gold as they call it. Um, yeah. So it's only if you really want that stuff that you can really do it. If not,

[02:41:19] you can just light one or two and you're, you're good to go. Um, to the next boss fight, um, which you think, Oh, like I'm just going to pray to this altar and bingo, bango, bongo. You're, you're good. Um, but you have to fight a boss fight every time at these trials. Um, yeah, I basically just resigned myself. I'm like, at any point I could accidentally be in a boss fight and die. So,

[02:41:50] Hey, you're catching on. That's good. Uh, yeah. So like not, not too much there outside of, um, after the trial. Yeah. She, she gained some powers or whatever. Very linear puzzle. Most of the puzzles are kind of linear, but like some, like some of them get kind of egregious with like, it doesn't really give you a moment to fuck up. Like you can't fuck this puzzle up.

[02:42:18] Like the only thing you do is fuck up your opportunity to get some of these chests, which I think I messed up one chest, but I was like, ah, I don't care anymore. I'm over it. Yeah. That's fair. Um, next area. Also Osa trail. Uh huh. Osa trail, which there's, there's actually like four areas and I just kind of glossed over them all, but like, it's a trail. There's this part. This is where you run into Sheena. I think you might've run into her once before. Is this the first time?

[02:42:45] this is the first time that you run into her. All right. Well, the best thing is, and this is what I used in my tales of symphonia, like little blue sky tweet or skeet. Uh, skeet, skeet, skeet. Ah, absolutely. Uh, it's this scene where this fucking chick is like, ah, I'm going to kill you. Indigo Montoya. You killed my father. And she runs towards you. And, uh, Colette falls over next to this obvious lover. Right.

[02:43:15] That's not even hidden whatsoever. Yeah. I don't know. You can't tell me that that's like a maintenance hole. What? What? No. How do you maintain a trail with a hole? I don't. I don't know. It's just a, it's just a stupid gag. It is funny. It got me alive. Yeah. It's stupid. It's stupid, but it's funny. It's literally fucking Wile E. Coyote type shit. I know. And what's funny is that, um,

[02:43:45] they call Sheena the clumsy assassin because of it. When in reality, like that was all Colette. Like, how can you, it's fine. It's fine. I don't know. I'm going to be honest, dude. Um, I'm not an assassin and I would have seen the strap door. I've seen it and been like, Whoa. Like, better avoid that. That looks like a bungee spike pit, dude. Like,

[02:44:12] I don't want anything to do with that. What the hell? I'm not going to step on that. I'll avoid that. Like I barely step on grates while walking. Literally. I was just about to say, I don't step on fucking, uh, sewer, sewer lids. Yeah. Because I'm afraid I'm going to fucking fall. Like it's Ed, Ed and Eddie. I'm going to step on one end and it's going to fucking spin. And you're just going to be down there for who knows how long.

[02:44:37] I'll probably be decapitated because I'm not going to fall fast enough for the great to not come back around. And then. Oh gosh, that's brutal. Yeah, dude. That's what my brain does. That's why I don't step on them, dude. That makes sense. I'm not trying to have half my body washed up in the sewer system. Yeah. And people would be like, how did this happen? You'd be like an unsolved mystery. Yeah. This was clearly a hit. Like this was a mafia style hit. And tracing back, he said some really controversial.

[02:45:08] It would suck. Yeah. Because it's like, dude, who did he piss off? And they'd look on my social media history and they'd be like, oh, he pissed off a lot of people. So many people. Everyone was his enemy. Dude. If I commit suicide, I'm going to do it in a way that like looks like a murder. And I'm just going to leave breadcrumb trails for people. I don't like. Frame your enemies. Yes. Dude. I'm going to frame the shit out of them. I have to cut this part out because. Yeah. Don't give it away. Genuine. Genuine. Genuine. Genuine thinking thought.

[02:45:37] I was thinking thought. Saving that for later. Yeah. Going to plot out my enemy's demise. Yeah. Well, you know, plotting out enemies' demises. When we go to Palma Costa, these stupid fuckers that you run into. Oh, the worst. You bump into this lady and you break her potion. And they're like, oh, give us another potion. I mean, fair. I guess. But it's like,

[02:46:04] it's stupid because the potion costs like 50 bucks. And it's like right down the street. And then it's like, just give her 50 bucks. Give her a hundred bucks. I have a billion dollars. Like, I don't care. But it's so special. It's a special Palma Costa potion. Yeah. You can only buy one per person. Yeah. It's like a thousand gold. It's so expensive. Yeah. These guys are grifters. So, I mean, they need all the money they can get probably. See,

[02:46:33] when I was first playing this, I, cause how you get in, you get into the port and all of a sudden, like you're immediately in an area with all of these vendors. So you can upgrade your weapons, uh, buy potions and stuff. So when I was, um, first playing it, I upgraded all my weapons. I'm like, this is awesome. This is great. I'm already ready for whatever's coming next. And so I had depleted all of my gold. And then this happened.

[02:47:03] And I'm like, shit. I had to really go the long way around to get like a stinking potion. You had to sacrifice your body for, uh, yeah, I had to sell so many things. Whatever. Yeah. She, she sold her soul. No. Um, but yeah, that was really frustrating. Cause I could have just bought a potion. Yeah. I walked right on through that market. I was like,

[02:47:33] good for you. I clearly fell to my womanly wiles and decided to go shopping. Um, so it does feel good. That's all. That's a whole thing about these RPGs. That's going to the next town, check in the store. Yeah. It's very exciting. So yeah. Extended magazine. I'm like, fuck. Yeah. Yeah. I'll have that for that. Thanks Chicago.

[02:48:06] So other stuff happens here. There's like something about religion, I think. Uh, well that is, yeah, you can do like the tours and stuff. There's like a cathedral in the town. And they're like, Hey, get this book. And, and then you go there and you're like, Hey, we don't have it. I'm like, I'm like, why? What did you do with that? They fucking gave it to these people that I did a lot of shit that happens in this town, actually. But like, yeah, these people got the,

[02:48:35] the people who you got scammed with the potion. They did the fucking insurance fraud on you. Yeah. They're the ones who, they also stole the book. Their identities. Yeah. And also that less of all of it, my identity. I mean, it's not like they, Oh, well, yay. Yeah. So fuck them. Yes. There's this whole like story, a lot storyline. I'm, uh,

[02:49:05] I skipped right over it apparently, but like, there's this whole storyline where like this guy, the mayor is like a good guy. And then he's like, Oh, actually he's really bad. He's like sacrificing people. And like, it's like a full metal alchemist, uh, it's like a full metal, full metal alchemist brotherhood episode, but yeah. on fast forward and muted because there's only like a couple, you, every single like idea is only it. uh, it's only engaged with for like five sentences.

[02:49:35] And then it's like, all right, onto the next part. And I'm like, okay, I know we're filling in our, we're using our imagination, filling in a lot of blanks here. There's a lot of things that are implied. And then like, you don't know whatever. Cause it's like, literally homie is like, uh, I got to do this thing because you go to this, you go to this, uh, human form and you do the thing and you're supposed to go there to do this thing. And somebody shows up. They're like, Hey, actually the fucking mayor's bad. You don't have to go back, but you can, and you'll, you'll get answers and stuff. And I was like, Oh fuck it.

[02:50:04] I'll go back and talk to this guy. Cause maybe this dude's lying. I don't fucking know. And so I went back. The dude is like, Hey, uh, I don't even remember, but like as he's talking, his daughter's back behind him and she's like, she's like, all right, it's time. And she stabs him. And then fight him. And it's like, why is this moving so fast? I have no chance. It's like emotionally kind of, any of these people. Yeah, no, you, you just find out like, you're like, Oh wow.

[02:50:34] This governor general bore really, really doing it for the people. Turns out that he had been secretly, um, helping the designs in the human ranch because the designs were like, yeah, we turned your wife into a monster just like they did with marble. And like, in order to get her back to how she was, um, you just have to keep paying us money and like taxing your people and giving that money to us.

[02:51:04] And, uh, you know, so he was secretly doing that and making the, the town very vulnerable to the designs and the design and, uh, And, uh, he never during that process saw that his daughter was dead and, um, an impersonator demon, uh, took her place. So that's cool. Yeah. You, yeah, tight.

[02:51:34] The whole thing. It's so funny too. Cause it's like within the, within the span of three minutes, like you're like, uh, I trust you. Actually, you're a bad guy. And now I'm defending you and I'm holding you. And like, as you're dying and I'm like fulfilling your dying wish. And also I'll lie about your daughter being dead because you, I don't want, I care about you so much that I don't want you to know that your daughter's dead. And I'm like, you don't know this fucking guy. He sacrificed so many people. I get whiplash.

[02:52:03] I get whiplash. Like there's something about the stories that move really fast or I'm just like, wait, can we just linger on something for a minute? Can I sit in that for a second and really process? No, there is no time. But also at this point, it's like, there's not a million games that are doing story like amazing at the time that this game is out. So it's like, this is probably really good storytelling for like it's time. It definitely was. I was enthralled. The ideas are good. You know,

[02:52:32] like there are good ideas here and it's just like, I'm, I wish I, I'm going to, I'm going to read the manga. Okay. That's what I'm going to do. They did make, um, an anime, uh, for this. they did make an anime. Was it made by the person who did Astro Bot? No. I don't know. I don't know why I thought that would be funny. I don't know. I started it and I just had to finish it, I guess. I don't know. Fair. I, no, I appreciate that. Just stick,

[02:53:01] stick to it. See if it lands. Um, so, uh, Thoda Geyser is like this area. It's like a, you go over mountains or something and then like you end up on the other side and yada, yada, yada. You end up at this like Island. This Island is annoying because you have to get there by getting in these wash tubs. Yeah. And it's a whole ordeal, which takes like a minute just to do the whole thing. And I went there, did the Geyser thing. I was like, okay, cool. And I left,

[02:53:30] but then they were like, Hey, you gotta go there and you gotta do this thing. I'm like, okay. And I went there and I did it again. And I went back and then they're like, Hey, actually there's a fucking thing up there. You gotta go do the seal. And I'm like, Oh my fucking God. Yeah. Sometimes. I mean, honestly you can do all those things at once. Yes. I play this game very, uh, what's the word? I, I didn't, uh, put, I didn't have everything lined up.

[02:53:59] So I was doing a lot of backtracking inefficiently. That's what I was looking for. Yeah. Yeah. It's fine. I mean, this first playthrough, so it's fair. Um, cause they give you, I wouldn't say opportunity, but I'm going to just say that they give you the opportunity to just fuck around and find out in a lot of ways. Like there's multiple quests in some area and you don't know that until like later. Until you're in the middle of it. Like I was just there.

[02:54:29] What do you mean? The thing about this game, and I talked about this last week, I was complaining about it. Yeah. But, um, but, the way that you, the, the order in which you approach things affects where some items exist. Mm-hmm. And it affects the storylines in a slight way where like some things resolve here, some things resolve here. At least that's what I saw at a cursory, that's what I saw at a cursory glance. Yeah. So, when I got confused as to where I'm supposed to go. So the whole thing is like, there's multiple different areas. There's the Tower of Mana, there's this museum,

[02:54:59] there's Asgard, and then there's this geyser. And you can bounce around all of these different places. There's also a lake, there's also, there's fucking all kinds of shit going on. Right? You're in this big ass area. It takes you fucking three minutes to get to each one because you're getting ambushed on the world map all the time. And so it's like, every time you go to the wrong place and you fuck up, and you, and you wander around in there for 15 minutes, because you don't know where you're supposed to be going, because the fucking synopsis isn't fucking helping you. And so it's like, Oh, not at all. And so it's like, you, you're, you're just fucking wandering around. You go on the internet,

[02:55:29] you go on the GameFAX boards, and you're like, where do I find this item? And they're like, okay, did you go to the geyser first? Or did you go to the pond first? Or did you go to the vision, the tower of mana first? Because that's going to change the fucking, it's like, because this person is going to go somewhere else, whoever that person took the key, they're going to go somewhere. And I'm like, I'm going to gun, gun to my brain, gun to my brain, end it. Very innovative for the time, I guess. But yeah, also if you're trying to, um, like really condense your time,

[02:55:58] it's not convenient. It's not convenient. Yeah. Because I was like, dude, all these message boards, they're not helping me, so I'm going to go do a walkthrough. And every walkthrough is like, do exactly as I say. And I'm just like, fuck, well, I've already passed this point. I've passed that. I'm beyond reprise. So I just had to figure it out on my own. Like, remember back in the day when they would make official walkthrough guidebooks? Yeah, Prima guys. Yeah. Yeah. They, they did that for Tales of Symphonia

[02:56:27] and I have that somewhere, somewhere around here. I should pull it out for funsies when I find it, but. I'm fucking sick. You should mail it to me. I probably want it, For free. to be honest. No reason. I probably, I'll take pictures of it and send it to you. Do a scan. Can you, do you have a scanner? I do. I do have a scanner. Why? I can scan it for you. For when I do traditional doodles and like, scan them. Okay. Oh, okay. All right.

[02:56:57] So there. That's a good reason. Ha ha. That sounded sarcastic. That is a good reason. I don't think it's sarcastic. I know. All right. So you do the photogieser at the end of all of this shit. You eventually break a seal with Sheena and you get this summon, I guess. I don't know actually what this person, this thing does. It's like a guardian spirit. Yeah. Water, water stuff. Yeah. Um, you fight. Well,

[02:57:25] if you do this, um, differently, like, yeah, you eventually come back like to all of these areas that you did the trials at because they have summoning spirits. And so later on in the game, when you get Sheena, you're basically backtracking to the tree at ruins for Efreet, uh, the Balcroft mausoleum for Sylph and,

[02:57:55] um, Thodageyser for Undine and so on and so forth. And, uh, yeah. I mean, at least it's kind of like, okay, that's kind of cool. But, um, before that, you're just in it for the angel trial things. Yeah, the love of the game and seeing a girl slowly lose her humanity. What is with, like, ice and water goddesses just being almost naked

[02:58:24] in, like, games like this? You know what I mean? Like, you ever see Shiva in the Final Fantasy games? Yeah. Um, uh, fanservice. Something about water. Something, I mean, honestly, they'd probably do it to a fire goddess, too. How many fire goddesses? I think fire's always a god. Like, Efreet is always Final Fantasy. Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's always male here. But, I'm just, I'm just saying, like, I think, um, they just,

[02:58:54] I mean, water nibs is a thing, you know, I don't know. Yeah. Water's kind of sexy. Female, female and water. The water is fluid. It can be curvy. I don't know. I'm just trying to connect water. Pregnancy? Oh, there we go. Yeah, we're getting fertile waters. Yeah. I don't like the, I don't like the first fertile waters. I'm walking it back. Oh, okay. All right, so we're going to Asgard,

[02:59:24] which has nothing to do with anything cool. Not really. Because it sounds cool. Not really, other than. But it has the fucking cell games there. Do you see this? Yeah. I saw this, and I was like, whoa, some cool shit's about to happen, and then you just do a boss fight and leave. I'm like, oh. Yeah, you fight a fake god. Which sounds cool. It sounds cool, but it's really not. And when you get there, these fucking terrorists are there, like, we're going to blow this shit up. I'm like, what the fuck is going on? And then you just disarm it,

[02:59:54] and there's like, all right, we're fucking off. And then, I don't know what the fuck is going on in Asgard, but they need to get this shit together. Okay, brief plot line for Asgard is fake god is there because people fucked around with that battle stadium thing and released said fake god from it, and now fake god demands sacrifices,

[03:00:21] and it's only young women of the village, naturally. Nice. The young virgin sacrifice, and they have to do a little dancey dance before their sacrifice to this fake god, and so... Gotta try out your product, dude. You know, test drive. Apparently, apparently, that's what happens. And so, the two terrorists have a really good reason to because one of them is, like,

[03:00:51] it's his sister who gets chosen for the next sacrifice. So, they're like, we're gonna fuck this shit up before, like, my sister dies. I'm glad I didn't interrupt you because I was gonna say they wanna fuck this girl. And then you're like, this is my sister. Well, I mean, maybe, maybe the other one wanted to. I don't know. They both cared about it. We don't, we don't, we don't get a backstory. I don't even remember any of that.

[03:01:21] Well, it's because you're just like, hurry up, I need, I need to play this game and finish it. So, uh, we go into Balacruf Mausoleum. Balacruf Mausoleum. I don't remember anything about this except for the screenshot here where I stared at this fucking puzzle for like ten minutes where I was like, I don't, I don't even remotely know. Like, there's, I don't know, was I supposed to like, I think there might have been things I was supposed to be

[03:01:51] reading and I read it and I was like, alright, cool. And I fucked off. Yeah. So I googled it and then it was like, hey, there are secret doors with items. Just push these buttons on it. Oh, okay, cool. Alright, yeah, I'd do it one at a time. Uh, you know, you start the, the windmill like one thing at a time until you get whatever. And you gotta do it from a specific angle otherwise it doesn't fucking work. It's very annoying. Yeah. A lot of- I just switch the sorcerer's ring to make it do windy things.

[03:02:21] A lot of puzzles in this game. It hasn't really hit the epitome of annoyance yet. No. But, uh, it gets close in this next area, Tower of Mana. Now you don't, like I said, you can approach a lot of these different areas in different ways. So, this is not even the order that I approach them in. I think I did the Tower of Mana like a little earlier. Or no, because you have to get, you have to get a key to get inside of here. So, yeah, you have to hit certain things still. Um, but- Tower of Mana is a- Meh, who knows.

[03:02:51] But yeah. Tower of Mana- This place is annoying because you, it's a block puzzle thing. So it's very slow. Yeah. Um, they get, the puzzles get slower and more annoying the more you progress in this game. Yeah. it's just one of those things where it's like, okay, here we go. Um, because you do the Angel Trials and they're like, not too bad overall. It's like, okay. You know what it really reminds me of is, um,

[03:03:22] this game probably, I think this game gets compared to Final Fantasy X a lot. Yeah. And a specific thing about this is that the trials are fucking awful in both games. But I would say that the trials are a little less awful in this game. I didn't get to the end game ones than Final Fantasy X, because Final Fantasy X's trials, even from the very beginning, they're terrible. Um, and slow. And like, monotonous. And so it's like, these are like, medium and monotonous. Yeah. Until like,

[03:03:51] towards the end. And they start getting slow and I'm like, oh, this is fucking terrible. But, um. This is the worst. Yeah. They both, both of those games have awful trials that require you to solve puzzles and just slow, kill the pacing completely. So, um. Yeah, basically. Not terrific. Especially if you're playing co-op, watching one person do these stupid puzzles. I can only imagine how annoying that is. Yeah, they probably get up and walk away and they're like, alright, call me back in. We got a bottle. Some ramen. Yeah. Some popcorn.

[03:04:22] Get some pizza. You know, whatever. Another drink. Yeah, because. Do you need another drink? Because we're fucking chilling right now. We are. And we're not even halfway then. Halfway then. A quarter of the way through the game. We're halfway through where I got. And then, I assume it's gonna get faster because I'm at this point I'll have nothing to contribute. Yeah. So the Asgard Ranch, I don't care what happens here, but the main thing

[03:04:51] is that there is this fucking obvious door and there's a boulder in front of it. And like, the first time you go there, I'm like, yo, the first time you go there, there's a cutscene and the door is just in the middle of the party. And you guys are like talking like, how are we gonna get in there? I don't know. And so eventually you guys talk and this guy is on his deathbed. He's like, oh, I got this boulder. Here's this magic spell that moves the boulder. And they're like, boulder? Door? You're a boulder.

[03:05:21] Yeah. Oh my God. If they couldn't make it more obvious. No wonder Sheena fell in that trap door. Like, if nobody fucking sees any of this fucking shit going on. Yeah. I mean, they cannot immerse the player in the game like that. Like that. You can't just have the characters be like, when it's so obvious to us. Like, hide it better. I don't know. Like, make it invisible.

[03:05:50] I feel like in this game, like, they could have just been like, yeah, been like, oh, they made this an invisible door. You know? And we now have the spell to make it visible. Oh, that makes sense. Like, don't. It's fine. One thing that insanely frustrates me is when, and it's not like in a video game sense, but like, it's like a ludonarrative distance a little bit, where I beat the living fucking clown shit out of these enemies.

[03:06:20] And then they're like, we can't storm the front gate. It's too dangerous. I'm like, what do you fucking mean? I will kill a, I will kill a battalion of these people. And I will sleep like a baby at night. Like, I don't know what, why do I have to sneak around these people? Like, it makes me annoyed. But, uh, the picking and choosing of morality moments is quite interesting. It's fine. So, we go to the Tower of Salvation, which is the end

[03:06:50] of the game. Wow. Yeah. Pretty real. You did it. Yeah, so old lady's gonna be a angel and then, crazy twist, Party didn't like it. Party is not happy about that. And also, the angels are bad. Yeah. Which this guy kind of seems a little dismissive and passive-aggressive the whole time. Anyway. Yeah. Yeah. He was suspicious from the beginning, but, you know. Sussy baka. The sussiest of bakas.

[03:07:20] Um, yeah. So, then you, uh, do you end up fighting him here? Yeah. You fight him and when you beat him you end up fighting Kratos and then after that you end up fighting someone else, I forget. And in the Kratos fight and in the guy after that, uh, it's not, you don't have to win because I lost both times because I was almost dead and everyone had no mana. Yeah, that sounds about right. You just die and, which is everyone's

[03:07:49] favorite in RPGs, uh, battles you're supposed to lose. Even though you think you're supposed to fight it, it's, and they're like, no, just. Yeah, well, I didn't know I couldn't die against Kratos so I ended up, like, wasting a bunch of items. I mean, items honestly aren't that big of a deal, but you can only hold 20 of each. Yeah. So it's like, whatever. I've wasted, like, fucking seven bottles of life trying to keep us alive. When I died, I was like, oh my god, I have to do that all over again. And then, no, you don't. I'm like, oh, okay, cool.

[03:08:19] Wish you would've, if you're gonna fucking give me a fight that I have to lose or a fight that if I lose it's not a big deal, I want to get shit stomped where it is obvious I'm not supposed to win. You know what I mean? Right, right. They need to be doing, they need to be fucking hitting straight nine, nine, nine, nine on me whenever I get hit. I'm like, oh, okay, I get it. Yeah, it's like, all right, yeah, and you'd be like, oh, okay, yeah,

[03:08:47] I'm really just supposed to not win this. But yeah, yeah, no, they don't do that here. But this is where, you know, what's-her-name, Colette is like, full-on robot mode. Yeah, she's not herself. She, she having a time. Yeah, and then this is when the group just kind of says, yeah, you know, we're, we're gonna just not do this journey

[03:09:17] because it sounds like a really bad time for everyone. What a time to pull out at the very end. At the very end. You couldn't have just let me keep my personality, Lloyd? Like, you could have fucking maybe, maybe pulled out when I could feel warmth on my skin. You know, smile and talk to you like a person, but no, here I am. Mute and emotionless. It's fine.

[03:09:46] It is neat. So a lot of things, a lot of interesting, like, ideas are being injected into the story, but, um, I don't know how much we're actually gonna talk about that because we've already passed up a lot of things. Yeah. Uh, so we're at Teladalala, which is the, yes, perfect. That's what I said. Uh, yeah, you did. Sorry, this is the world, the, screenshots not from that, from the world. So the, uh, there's a lot of things

[03:10:16] that happen in between this and the sewers, but, I wanted to talk about this area in particular. Mm-hmm. Where you go to this area and it's like a mage academy, maybe, and, uh, I fucked off here for like, maybe 30 minutes. I wasted like maybe 30 or 40 minutes of my fucking time in this area because they like, you go in there, you're like, hey, we need to find a way to fix Colette. And these people have been researching this forever.

[03:10:44] And things have happened before this, like a lot of things happened actually between fighting that angel and this area. But, you get there, they're like, oh, we need a fucking crest or something. And I'm like, yeah, all right, we just gotta go find a fucking crest, we'll go fuck off. And so, I left the city and wandered around in the woods for forever. And, and then I, I'm like, I don't know where the fuck I'm supposed to go. And so, I came back to the city, walked around talking to everyone.

[03:11:14] I would walk past this guy maybe 12 or 13 times because I talked to him once before and he's like, oh, I'm just a humble junk merchant. Oh, don't mind me. And so, I just fucking didn't think about it and never like, cause I was like, oh, this is a useless NBC cause 99.9% of NPCs are completely fucking useless. And so, it's like, I wandered around the city for like, and the fucking academy has like 50 rooms. Yeah. They really do.

[03:11:44] Uh, this is, this is where that I wish that the, the remasters would, um, introduce kind of like the markers that some JRPGs have where it's like, you're supposed to go here and then it'll have like the, the, the sign above who you need to talk to. Yeah. Like quest markers and stuff. Yeah. Quest markers, all of that. Um, but no, they, they don't have you

[03:12:13] like, you don't have any of that. You just have to raw dog it and blind, blindly feel your way through. So fucking listener, listener, this dude that we're describing is literally in a crowded area in the corner, in the shade, in the darkness, surrounded by boxes and shit. And his name is Junk Collector. He doesn't even have a name. There's nothing that's pointing your direction.

[03:12:42] There's no light beam shining on him or anything like that trying to direct your attention to this motherfucker. We don't do that here. In fact, when you walk through this area, the camera pans and for like 60% of the time, he's not even visible. Yeah. And the synopsis, as we've said before, it doesn't help you with anything. It is just as vague as, like, you really do have to pay attention to the current dialogue and what's going on

[03:13:12] in cut scenes in order to, like, figure out where you're going. I'm not even a thousand percent sure they even hinted that this guy has the thing. Because even when you look at the synopsis, it's like, we need to find a way to get a key crest. I'm like, yeah, we do. Don't we? That's a good idea. And when you talk to the guys that you were talking to before, they're like, I don't know where to get one. And I'm like, oh. And then you talk to the junk collector and he's just like, so it's like, it's literally on a box next to him

[03:13:42] just sitting there. And he's like, oh, it made me so fucking mad when I ran, because I went and talked to him sarcastically after like 40 minutes of like wasting my time. And I was like, oh my God, this is the guy I'm supposed to talk to. Great. This whole time. Yeah. So, we get to, we get to these sewers. I don't even remember what these sewers are about, but what were we even doing? You're sneaking into

[03:14:12] Mel Tokyo through the sewers. Okay, so you've already been to Mel Tokyo once, but now they don't like you. Yeah. Now, now you're kind of, you're kind of banned. So you got to sneak in through the sewers. A lot of being banned, a lot of being arrested, a lot of that happening in this game. You get arrested like six times. Yeah. You're basically just a group of wanted murderers at this point. So when you're in the Tokyo sewers,

[03:14:42] the whole gimmick about this area, now you have your little ring. We kind of mentioned this vaguely, but like every, every dungeon changes this little ring that you have. It changes its, its, its function. Now for the most part, you're like shooting something out, but in this one, the ring makes you smaller and you're, it's like, okay, well, what are we gonna do with that? Well, for one thing, there are ledges that are tiny and you walk around on those. But another thing is that there are these spider webs. Yeah. The whole fucking thing about this level and Hannah watched me play this,

[03:15:12] this part. just giggling because she's just like, oh, this is gonna suck, he's gonna hate this. Yup. I hate this. The whole thing is a block puzzle. It's a giant block puzzle, but it's even better than just a block puzzle. It's a block puzzle where you have to backtrack multiple times amongst multiple different screens of areas while enemies are respawning, repopulating the world and you have loading screens

[03:15:42] and you have to do not platforming but like walking around like weird routes and you have to figure out where you need to push these blocks to go down below you so that they can open paths so that you can backtrack back to those paths and then proceed. But also, if you fuck up, you have to do a whole other thing to backtrack back to the area that makes the blocks. Wow! Wow!

[03:16:11] This area sucks. Yeah, this is what they made thinking, hmm, I really hate our players so we're gonna really tell them that by telling them they're trash and they belong in the sewers. Yeah, it's not great. It's not, I mean, it's between this one, this puzzle area or another one that's

[03:16:41] more down the line that I hate because the one that I did that was later in the game, that was the one that made me rage quit for like a year before I finished the game. This was a significant hit to my morale. Yeah. This level. Because this was post-sickness. This was when I was like, okay, I'm gonna dedicate a lot of time to this and this was like the first thing I did. Actually, the first thing I did was that thing I just ranted about earlier about the area. So I was already a little pissed off about that.

[03:17:11] And then I came into these sewers ready to fucking win. And then just, this is the water temple from Ocarina of Time that everyone complains about. It's like the exact same problems of like backtracking and kind of back and forth. It's not even abstract. The puzzle is so insanely straightforward. The worst kind of puzzles in anything, in any, any like media of like doing any kind, like any physical puzzles or paper puzzles or video game puzzles

[03:17:40] is a puzzle where you can intuit the answer, but you have to do something monotonous to finish the puzzle. Like, so it's like for you understand in like 15 seconds, oh, this is what the solution is, but it takes you eight minutes to fucking actually enact the solution. So you got the satisfaction of understanding the puzzle, like, oh, I'm so smart. Seven minutes and 45 seconds ago, and now you are just

[03:18:09] waiting for the fucking to go to the next puzzle. Like, I just want this to be over with, and it's not. It is never over with, because you are trying to move these giant trash cubes, like, around, but then you have to shrink, so you can get to the other side, and then you have to get big again to, like, push the cube, or what, it's just monotonous and annoying.

[03:18:39] This is the only area in the entire game, up to the point that I've played, where the game prompts you to skip it after you've done it once. Yes. That's how bad this area is. ever again. It just goes, hey, do you want to just jump over there, and I'm like, yes, yes, get me out of here. What the fuck do you mean? Yeah, I want to, I want to travel this thing like it's a regular sewer, where I don't, I mean, who has puzzles in their sewers?

[03:19:08] Who does that? Who built that? Who built this place? Yeah. I did that a couple of times, like, who built this place? Who has trash compactors? There's this fucking area in the Temple of Lightning, where the entire solution of the puzzle is that a boulder falls down and destroys a bridge to make a ramp to go downstairs, and I'm like, how do they navigate this place normally? Like, what do you fucking do if you have to go downstairs and fix the fucking plumbing or something? Like, you have to

[03:19:37] blow the bridge up and then they have to rebuild the bridge to fucking, there's this other area, we'll talk about in a second, where, like, the trap is that if you step on a pressure plate, a boulder rolls down a hill to kill you Indiana Jones style, but the fucking boulder goes over the pressure plate also, and so every time you step on the pressure plate, a new boulder falls, so logically thinking, the boulder should set the pressure plate off also, and the boulder should always be

[03:20:07] falling forever until they ran out of boulders, like, it's a dumb trap, like, anyway, unless it only goes off, I don't know, they built the technology of a pressure plate that only goes off if, like, 100 pounds is on it, but not five tons, because this boulder is, like, 20 fucking, 20 feet tall. They probably have the technology for that, like, I wouldn't doubt it. Yeah. I mean, you're right, they got the sorcerers ring and everything. It's true.

[03:20:37] Anyways, I'm being stupid. So, I mean, it's not the fucking worst thing ever, but the sewers, that was, it was a test of my patience. And so, we go on to this another area, which is the Ozette area, and then, like, this forest. I don't necessarily remember Ozette, even though I was there, I was stuck there for a long time. And, uh, so it's like, Ozette is, like, this tree area, and this is where the pink character girl lives. And then, right across the river is the,

[03:21:07] is Japan. Yeah, middle Tokyo, right? So, but there's a forest that, like, separates this whole, like, area. And, listener, yet again, I wasted, like, 45 minutes wandering around this forest thinking that there was some fucking exit, so I needed to get to the Temple of Lightning. This was, like, a little further in. So you go, you're stuck in this little area

[03:21:36] for a little bit. And so, they're like, hey, the Temple of Lightning's to the north of us. I'm like, okay, I just need to find the north exit in the fucking forest. That's what they want me to do. And so I wasted 45 minutes. So the forest is like the lost woods. There's multiple exits that take you to an infinitely repeating area. But the forest is huge. It's a winding path. And I just don't know. I'm stupid, I guess.

[03:22:05] But I was convinced I could find the northern exit and I just wasn't finding it. And, you know, eventually, again, I look up a guide and it's like, oh, no, all you have to do is go to Ozet and go north of that and there's a dock and you just go on your boat, which I forgot I had because I literally only had it for a little bit. So it's like, get on your boat and then go north and it's literally right there. And I'm like, oh, my God, I'm gonna fucking kill myself. I'm gonna shoot myself. Yeah, that is the feeling that you get

[03:22:34] through a majority of the game, especially when it comes to puzzles. And I say that with all the love for this game in the world. But yeah, like, I feel like if they ever remake this game, like fully remake this game, less puzzle shit, please. Yeah, like, please. Yeah, just really don't do that to us again.

[03:23:04] So, yeah, it's, you stumble upon OZ and another catatonic girl, which is the theme of this game. And it's kind of traumatizing how you meet her, considering she Well, you met her already. Oh, okay. But you're bringing her home. Yeah. Yeah, so it's her home, but like, you meet her at the same time you meet Pretty Boy Floyd. What's his name?

[03:23:35] Zelos? Zelos, yeah. Yeah, that's right. Those two people join the party at the same time. Yeah. And then she's like, I want to go home. Every single place you go, she's like, I want to go home. I'm like, okay, cool. Good talk. Please, let me go home. Yeah, go ahead and tell that story because that story is cool. Yeah, so you finally go to Ozette and drop her off at her house and she starts going about her business and she's acting like she's taking care of

[03:24:04] someone else who's really sick and really sick. Like, really, like bedridden, bedridden sick. So she's like, I can't get out of bed for any reason. Like, the person is so sick they're not even moving in the bed. And she's trying to take care of everyone, herself, and the household, and the sick person.

[03:24:34] And then you find out that... It looks like the fucking Addams family inside of the house, by the way. It's kind of decrepit, a little dusty. Yeah, it's not the best environment. Especially if you have asthma. Yeah, yeah, I would suggest bringing an inhaler for that. It's a little bit of albuterol, if you will. And

[03:25:05] turns out that Prosea has been kind of in this state for so long that she doesn't realize that the person that she's caring for has been long dead. They're a skeleton. They're mummified. They're mummified. Like, I don't know. Like, that's kind of a messed up situation. Like, a lot. So, they decide, you know,

[03:25:34] maybe you should come with us after all. Yeah, it's a comedy, you know? It's funny. Yeah. It's funny like Cowboy Bebop. Yeah, it's very funny. It's, I, just looking back on it, I'm just laughing my ass off about it. I can really, like, if I just imagine the Seinfeld playing, it's perfect. It works perfect. Yeah, it's just a... Tonally. Yeah, it's perfect. It's great. Um,

[03:26:04] so she more or less joins their, their group. Posse? Yeah, posse. I was like, cadre? Is that? I don't know. Um, and it turns out that as we talked about earlier, she has an X-sphere on her body without a key crest, and that's part of the problem as why she's, like, it's dangerous, and she's more or less been

[03:26:34] experimented on by, um, some not-so-great guys. Dr. Wiley. Yeah. And, um, so they, as a group, decide to go to the, the mines to get some ore in order to make a key crest. Which is in a fucking box in the corner somewhere. Like, in the deep part of the mine. Yeah, but it's not obvious. Like, it's not even obvious. It's not like Legend of Zelda,

[03:27:04] where you get there and you're like, there's something here. It's like, there are boxes around, and never in the whole, in the whole area do you ever, you get the bombs. That's what your ring does in this area. You drop bombs. You never, never drop bombs to blow up boxes. The whole fucking time. And so, like, I did it on, I did it as a joke, and then it actually blew up the boxes. And there's, like, 20 boxes in there. So it's like, I've wasted like 15 minutes walking back

[03:27:34] and forth from the entrance to the fucking end of this area. Like, what am I supposed to be doing right now? You figured it out on accident, and, you know, I'm sure you're actually quite thankful because how many times would you have gone back and forth even more had you not done that? I don't know. Like, it pays off, because again, that's how I found the dude that had the fucking key crest in the corner in the darkness, like Batman, like, waiting for the moment to fucking pounce on somebody who needed this thing.

[03:28:05] it's, you just gotta be doing things to be doing them in this game. Yeah, just for funsies. But you do that and equip that around Prisea's X-sphere, and she basically immediately regains all of her emotions, memories. Yeah, no big deal. Yeah, you know. Well, not all memories,

[03:28:35] because she basically doesn't remember anything of all the time that she was how she was. So, um, she didn't realize that the family member that she was taking care of was dead. Um, she didn't realize that, uh, well, a lot of stuff, a lot of stuff. So she kind of comes back to the world, um,

[03:29:04] devastated. But it's, we gloss over that as well. That's just like, oh yeah, staff for you. So anyways, it do be like that sometimes. It do be like that. Um, so they're like, well, you know, hey, glad you have a personality now. Um, we've got to go do things. And I think at that point you, you do

[03:29:34] run into Regal at that point, right? You have, or you have Regal in the place? You have Regal at this point, yeah. Okay. You run into Regal in the forest. That's right. Right at the beginning of the forest, so. Yeah. Because he jumps you, he's all masculine and shit. As a matter of fact, it might have been in the sewers. I don't remember. I think it is in the sewers and at the end of the sewers when we're about to get out. Because that's like the fight that you go in. Well, actually, that's where you fight him, but I don't think he joins your party until the forest. he runs off.

[03:30:03] He runs off. He's like, okay, bye. I almost killed the chosen, but okay, bye. And, yeah, so he's there to witness Prisea kind of regain herself there. and he is deeply obligated to, or like feels deeply obligated to protect her and help her and more or less,

[03:30:35] the reason why is because he is legitimately connected to her through the sister she once had. Because her sister's dead, by the way. So that's cool. always fun. Yeah, creepy foster. No, it's just, it's just sad. It's just sad. Because Regal was in love with Prisea's sister,

[03:31:03] and she more or less ends up dying by his hands, and that's why he vows to never use his hands ever again. And only his feet for murdering. It's like Homer's The Odyssey. Something like that happens, right? Yeah. So yeah, that happens. And yeah, and now you're at what,

[03:31:33] the Temple of Lightning at this point? Yeah, the Temple of Lightning is after that. This is where I'd done this, and this was my breaking point yesterday. Oh, the breaking point, no. Where, so in this little area, there is like 20 different rooms, and five of these rooms, or I would say three, maybe three of these rooms, it's completely pitch black darkness, and then there will be a lightning strike every

[03:32:03] second and a half, and that's when you can see, and you can walk, and you can fall off the ledge. Yeah, and then you have to start over. Um, it is, it does significantly impede your progress throughout the, the, the temple in regards to just like how fast you can go, and that wouldn't be, that wouldn't be an especially like big problem if you didn't have to traverse these areas over and over and over again, because there's tons of

[03:32:33] backtracking. I cannot stress enough how much backtracking is in this game, which is mildly annoying for the most part until they start adding obstacles to make the backtracking even worse. And in this, in this level, it was particularly bad because the whole point of the level is that you have three different areas that change your ring's ability, and the ring ability is it shoots lightning, but it shoots lightning of different colors, and those different colored

[03:33:03] lightnings, will destroy different colored blocks. And so, at first you get the blue lightning, then you get the yellow lightning, and then you get the red lightning. And in the top of this little central area is this pedestal where there are three blocks, there's a blue one, a yellow one, and a red one, which is the order in which you get the rings. Well, you have to destroy the blocks to lower this thing, and whenever the thing gets to the bottom, it initiates the boss fight. I

[03:33:32] didn't notice this thing for a while. I didn't ever go in this direction because you could totally miss this area. Right. And so, eventually, as I'm wandering around, I look up there and I see the blocks. I'm like, oh, shit, I had the yellow. So, once you override it, you can only use the color that you have last used. and as the colors go on from blue to yellow to red, they get further away from the central area, so it takes longer to get there.

[03:34:04] Well, I had to go back and get the blue thing so that I could break the blue one, right, and override the yellow, which means go backwards towards the fucking entrance. And then, I have to go to the yellow one, which the yellow one's kind of in a centralized area, but there's like an enemy that will always hit you. So I go and I hit the yellow guy, I mean, I go and get the yellow ring, and I get into the fight, and after the fight, totally forget why I even got the yellow in the first place, because the yellow was what I had before,

[03:34:33] so I was like, whatever, and so I went on and progressed throughout the fucking mission, and you can continue without making the fucking thing go down. I do all of everything, which is like this really long, like it takes like 15 minutes to get to the far back of this temple, the far back top area, and you get the red color, and I'm like, oh good, the red color, that's the thing I need, that's the last thing I need to make that pedestal fall down, and I go all the way back, and the yellow pedestal is still there,

[03:35:03] because, and since I have the red one, I can't aim up and hit that red one that's higher. No, not at all. So I had the rage quitting was real close, wasn't it? And what was even funnier is that I didn't know it was going to initiate a boss fight. So, had I died,

[03:35:33] I would have had to have done everything all over again. Like, I hadn't saved before I even started, before I even hit the blue block from the bottom of the pedestal. So I would have had to do everything all over again, and that probably would have caused me to delete the game. Because I would have been so angry. Fair. And then, you know, it wouldn't have had a better review at that point. Yeah. I'm sure you have a better review for it now,

[03:36:03] right? Because I think about Symphonia, and I always get, I mean, one, it's probably nostalgia glasses for me, where I'm always like, oh, I love this game so much. But then I do, I end up going through the puzzles and I'm like, I hate this. I hate the puzzles. So, I don't know. Everyone goes through that with a lot of games. Like, I just, I mentioned Vinyl Fantasy X. I also mentioned Ocarina of Time, which gets hit by that as well. There's always like, a bunch, there's a lot

[03:36:33] of games that are just wonderful, and then you get to that part. Like, Grand Theft Auto San Andreas with the fucking train. Fair. Fair. Apparently, Persona 5 Royal, for me, with Okumura's Palace, fucking, I don't even know. That's supposed to be hard, though. It is. It's so hard, and I hate it. Yeah, man. So, yeah, it's just one of those games where it's like,

[03:37:01] I love it so much, but when I'm actually, like, knee-deep into these stinking puzzle dungeons, it's like, oh, can we just skip this? Like, can I just travel through, fight some battles, and, you know, be done with it? No, I got you. So, do you want to continue on with the story, or do you want to wrap this up? Because we're almost at four hours. We can jump into final words. Let's jump

[03:37:30] into final words, because I'm sure this is big. We can do a part two now. I won't do that If you want to do a part two, fuck it. I mean, there are other Tales games that are co-op, but we'll go into our final words. This is an interesting thing, because I do give it a lot of slack, because it's older, right? Yeah. But I do think that if you're the kind of person that would like to experience games that

[03:38:00] influenced other games, I'm sure this game was influential for a lot of games that came after it. Specifically Tales of, I mean, Visions of Mana, because it seems like to have completely ripped off a lot of aspects of this game. But then again, it is relatively generic, to the point where I'm made lobe in my brain,

[03:38:30] so it's like, I don't really know. I do recommend the game specifically. I think a lot of my woes was coming from me trying to force myself to play the game whenever I wasn't really particularly feeling like playing it. And I feel like if I just took my time playing it over a long period, I feel like I would have not felt nearly as much aggression towards some random things that were annoying me. But then again, the things that were annoying me would be

[03:38:59] things that annoyed me no matter how much distance I had in time. Like, the Temple of Lightning thing and the not know, like, if I wasn't doing no shit, if I wasn't doing a review for this, the sewers would have filtered me. And, like, after, just me right ass to ass with the whole not knowing where to get the key crest thing from, and the internet not helping me, and then the sewers,

[03:39:29] like, and then the forest after, like, the forest was way later. That was, like, maybe, like, six or seven hours. That was, like, a day and a half afterwards when I ended up because going through the forest the first time is, like, ah, whatever. I found my way, like, pretty easily. Yeah, no problem. The problem is that I convinced myself that this, I needed to go through the forest in some weird path and it's, like, the Temple of Lightning. I forgot to do the yellow thing. So it's, like, a lot of the frustration is because, like,

[03:39:58] I wasn't really on my A game when I was playing the game. But then again, they were just totally human mistakes. They weren't, like, things that, it's, you know. It's hard. I get it. Because, like, I mean, we are nowadays so used to games that are either going to, I wouldn't say hold your hand, but they're gonna give you certain markers that it's, like, okay, here's, if you want to follow the main quest,

[03:40:27] here's that over here and here's the side quest things and you can, like, choose and follow the path and it's not, like, so crazy. Like, but with Symphonia, you're just kind of there, just dropped into a world and the, the map that you walk through is super generic so you are, you don't have any sort of specific areas that you know you're,

[03:40:56] you're going to. Everything looks the same so you get turned around, you, can visit certain places which you probably shouldn't be visiting but there it is and then it alters certain other aspects of the game and so it can get really overwhelming, really kind of confusing. Yeah. Because they just kind of drop you in and, you know, they're like, have at it, have fun kids and then you don't have fun.

[03:41:27] But it's just, it's just maybe just the, the sign of the time that it was made. So I'll give it that and plus my nostalgia for it will always top everything, I guess. It's like, but I do. I love the story. I love the characters. characters. Like, I just, I don't have too many complaints other than

[03:41:58] the fact that the dungeons can be super tedious. so outside of that, it's like, okay, that's fine. I'm here for the story. I can enjoy the battles with the enemies and bosses even, but, you know, it can be hard otherwise. Yeah. So, as a game, I probably still recommend it because there is a deniable charm, but as a co-op game, even though I didn't play any co-op

[03:42:27] and I think that you didn't play any co-op either, this is likely not the greatest co-op experience. It's kind of similar to the GIMP co-op games like Child of Light or like Resident Evil Revelations where if you have a younger sibling or something that just kind of want to interact with you, then this is something that they could probably do, but if you have, if you're getting drinks with the boys and they come over, you're not going to be playing Tales of Symphonia. They're going to be real mad with you.

[03:42:57] So, I probably don't recommend this as a co-op game even though it is an interesting concept and I like that these games will do something like this, this weird couch co-op. It's probably not the wisest move, but... No, I mean, I feel like generally JRPGs are really meant for the solo player. You know, so it's like, it's cool that they

[03:43:29] someone who's also interested in seeing a story unfold and with minimal interaction with the game outside of that, then like, great, then yeah, co-op with them. But if they are there to play video games with you, you might as well do like, I don't know, what do people play? Overwatch or whatever? Not locally. Oh, okay. I don't know, play Halo, play Jogbox. Yeah,

[03:43:59] yeah, Call of Duty, do that, do that with your voice. I don't recommend playing Call of Duty with split screen either. I don't know. You know, it's really funny, I did a Japanese lesson on Duolingo to keep my streak because I didn't know this was going to go past midnight, it's 12 await for me and as it got closer to 12 o'clock, I was like, I need to get her rolling so I can do a Japanese fucking, I can mute my mic

[03:44:28] and start doing Japanese real quick. A Japanese little lesson before the streak is broken. Yeah, 70 days, 70 days now. Oh, dang. Incredible. I can do another, I can do another one and get to 71 but I won't. Yeah, that's fair. Pace yourself. All right, so at the end of this very meaty episode, you want to give the listeners again a rundown on where to find you, where to find you online, what are you doing,

[03:44:57] you want to shout out anything random, one of your best friends, do something. All right, okay, so I'm Hannah from the Bacavich's podcast, me and my friend Stephanie, we drink a lot and we talk about anime and we go through one anime at a time, one episode at a time, break it down, give it our commentary rather drunkenly and yeah, we give opinions and all that fun stuff so if you're into that,

[03:45:27] check us out, you can get us on Spotify, pretty much anywhere that you listen to podcasts, Apple, all that fun stuff, so yeah, Tamagotchi, yeah, we do have Tamagotchis, not gonna lie, we have an episode talking about Tamagotchis, so don't worry about it, don't worry about it, don't worry about it, I mean, listen to it, but also don't worry about it,

[03:45:57] all right, well, next week we're talking about Genshin Impact, I think, I haven't played any yet, so, terrific, it's gonna be great, I'm really, it's a good thing, good thing that's on mobile, I bet you guys are real happy you're listening to me right now, so let me just play it, say bye bye, matame, matame,