Dawntrail's MSQ story is a disaster and waste of potential. [full spoilers]

[Raven2014]

SoC? Sorry - which game? Sounds like a SRPG, and I've been dying to get into a new one.

Sword of Convallaria.

Good news: it's a SRPG.

Bad news: it's a gacha game.

[SwadTheFrog]

Sword of Convallaria

...huh. Free to Play? That's actuallly completely unexpected. Thanks, I'll have a look.

Edit : Oh. It's a Gacha. For fuck's sakes.

[Raven2014]

...huh. Free to Play? That's actuallly completely unexpected. Thanks, I'll have a look.

Edit : Oh. It's a Gacha. For fuck's sakes.

Banner of the Maid, Triangle Strategy, Unicorn Overlord are all fairly recent SRPG tittles that I can recommend for gameplay, characters, and story.

And they're just good old no string attached SP games. You do have to pay for them though.

[SwadTheFrog]

Banner of the Maid, Triangle Strategy, Unicorn Overlord are all fairly recent SRPG tittles that I can recommend for gameplay, characters, and story.

And they're just good old no string attached SP games. You do have to pay for them though.

I've already tried out UO, it was alright. Just waiting a sale on TS, looked a bit flawed.

[ViaDesperare]

If you want other games, try out Troubleshooter Abandoned Children, Brigandine the Legend of Runersia, or Prime of Flames. If you've only played Fire Emblem, those games should be impossible to beat.

On to SoC, it's good. You can enjoy your time in Spiral of Destiny. If you two haven't played it yet, go try it out. You'll be praising the game in a week. The gameplay is better than Triangle Strategy, like insanely better.
In week, you'll be trash talking Wuk and explaining how Inanna and Nono are God-tiers beyond what she can ever be. It may be a gacha, but it's really well done. If you've played LangrisserM, it's pretty much that but in the form of FFT/TO.

[Raven2014]

In week, you'll be trash talking Wuk ..

I already have 101 games that I played that can be used for that purpose (some of them are even indie). I don't think adding one more gonna make a difference.

Also for me, there is no such thing as a "well done gacha". I don't even gamble in real life, and masking it behind a game does not make it any difference.

[Jojoya]

For Wuk Lamat who is supposed to give a shit about her people, she made no efforts at all to try and reach out to her brother despite his problems. she goes from uncaring to angry, to sadmad.

Which is likely because he was already the bad guy before she even came to Old Sharlayan to recruit us. When we had that sit down feast of roast parrot, both she and Erenville said that there was one claimant above all others that could not be allowed to take the throne. Once we made it to Tuliyollal and the claimants were all introduced, Erenville tells us that Zoraal Ja is the one.

She was not going to try to reach out to him during MSQ because by that point she knew it wouldn't work.

But I agree in general that Zoraal Ja didn't get the "screentime" needed to develop his character. We never got a good explanation of why he decided he needed to be the warmonger and would be conqueror. All we get is "people have to live through war to appreciate peace" then "let's just kill everything and screw peace".

[ZXN]

-Snip

-Double Snip

During Zoraal Ja's trial when he summons the visions, the text that pops up from the visions that appear all say either "The First Promise was born to sit on the throne!", "He will be a great Dawnservant!", or "None can compare to the Resilient Son!" This shows that for practically his entire life he had to shoulder a ton of expectations that pretty much the ENTIRETY of Tuliyollal had forced onto him simply because he was Gulool Ja Ja's kid, the "miracle" part adding even more pressure due to the assumption that Two-Headed Mamool Ja couldn't have children, so he HAD to live up to expectation no matter what.

Combine this with Krile's Echo sensing his feelings towards Wuk and Koana in the scene after the Xibruq Pibil feat, where it might be safe to say Zoraal Ja absolutely DESPISED Koana and Wuk, along with all the other small context clues, and you had everything to somewhat build up a very good antagonist, even if it was just for 80% of the MSQ and then was over after the trial, and giving players a lot of "Food for thought" about Zoraal Ja as a whole.

Instead the writers decided to use Zoraal Ja's time in the entire MSQ to build him up as some generic and boring one-dimensional cartoon villain who did the big bad villain things and now Wuk Lamat must defeat them in the name of peace.

[Manamaru]

Also that brief bit in solution nine with the people that are afflicted with a sickness due to lightning; didn't we have the end of SHB and a first portion of EW dedicated to Alisaie discovering a way to undo the effects of those that have had a little too much elemental juice? It just seemed really out of place or out of character not to have any of the twins go "Hey, that sounds like tempering. We can fix that!" And was conveniently glossed over for plot

[Remiferia]

Also that brief bit in solution nine with the people that are afflicted with a sickness due to lightning; didn't we have the end of SHB and a first portion of EW dedicated to Alisaie discovering a way to undo the effects of those that have had a little too much elemental juice? It just seemed really out of place or out of character not to have any of the twins go "Hey, that sounds like tempering. We can fix that!" And was conveniently glossed over for plot

This is one of the more baffling parts of the game because finding a cure to elemental sickness has been Alisaie's character arc for over ten YEARS now with Ga Bu's parents dying to summon the original Titan in ARR.

To be generous, it doesn't paint a good picture that the writers know anything about the characters they've inherited and it's likely why the Scions take such a backseat and Krile is missing her usual sass and quick wit.

This lack of understanding culminates at the end where we send two civilians and a rookie fighter to the Living Memory expedition team and leave behind five universe-saving scholars whose observations would have been infinitely more interesting than three sets of 'watch this person's mother die lol'.

We're in quite dangerous territory now where we have a lead writer that seemingly doesn't know or doesn't care enough to know how to write the characters he's been given, but also butchered all his new OCs across a single MSQ. The Scions were reduced to existing for Trust mechanics, we get fleeting conversations with Raha and Alisaie where their voice sounds frighteningly close to a person capable of individual thought and personality before Wuk Lamat presses the factory reset button on them and they become Yes Men. It's awful.