Bring on the warm-up.

[leene_chan]

I have several packets of poppy seeds that need planting! The yard looks pretty nasty right now. The snow dunes have shrunk down from seven feet to four, and everything's stained with mud.

Soon, I'll be able to take doll photos outside again. I hope you all like mud and dead grass! I'm afraid of what I'll find on the ground once the snow melts. I hope no animals got buried under there.

I'm halfway through chart five out of eight on the Japanese FAQ site I've been using. I wonder how long this game will be in the long run. I'm guessing that the main story is about as long as the PS2 remake of Tales of Destiny--maybe about sixty hours? I've switched to controlling Hubert as my main character. He may have low HP and defense, but I love firing those guns! I don't think there's been another character in the history of the series who can both slash the enemy and machine-gun them to death. As his name suggests, Hubert is really uber. Much better than Asbel. No wonder I had to switch the difficulty level to Simple when I did his Skit Battle...

I'm still enjoying the game, in spite of its frequent stupidity. At this point in the story, Asbel has quit his mamoru posturing and has become one of those infamous "void" characters, sitting back and letting the other party members take care of each other. What is up with that? He vows to protect Sophie and Cheria ends up caring for her. He vows to support Hubert and freaking Pascal has to both rescue Hubert after he gets lost in a snowfield and protect him from a wild boar.

Then again, judging by how selfish Asbel was in the beginning of the game, this probably isn't surprising.

He isn't even thinking much about Richard at his point--he leaves that worrying to Sophie. Speaking of which--please tell me it isn't due to Bamco's sick idea of dramatic irony that no one in the party has noticed that there's something seriously wrong with Richard other than him just being in a bad mood? Like he hasn't chopped his would-be assassin up in front of them, run his uncle through, trashed Lhant, and attacked the party twice all the while screaming and flailing around like something out of The Exorcist? "I'm sure he has a good reason for what he's doing," Asbel says. "You might not be able to go back to being the way you used to be," Malik warns him. Maybe if Richard were to swallow a baby whole in front of them they'd get the idea. You'd think that seeing him with red, glowing eyes and a contorted face, laughing gutturally and riding around on a wyvern would be enough for them.

I love that Pascal's village has a chocolate fountain! I guess I won't figure out how to properally romanize the names of the places until I get a guidebook.

Character-wise, I'm all right with the game so far--even though I think that Asbel is a masochistic attention whore who only bonds to people he can infantilize. XD ToG's incarnation of the Black Wings is very odd--especially the chef-wannabe sister who keeps coming back with taller and taller hats.