天下制覇

Oh boy, exposition!

Impressions:

Another very, very info-dump heavy bit as the game reinvents itself. You always have to love the godawful cliche so prevalent through Japanese media where characters deliberately withhold information that'd explain everything solely because screw you, that's why. It's especially godawful when they try to pass it off as some kind of twist when they finally get around to explaining themselves. If some character refuses to explain themselves, there's about a 98% chance that they're secretly good. It probably goes hand in hand with how allergic to lying or faking things characters are in Japanese media, like the very concept of deception is either anathema because it's simply too evil or if they think it's too confusing for anybody to reasonably follow if a character lies for any reason other than hiding their true feelings.

I think it's mostly a case of just poor writing than being specifically Japanese media related though, and lord knows there's no shortage of bad writing there. Rather than simply let a character pass without saying anything, it's throwing up neon signs in some kind of desperate assurance that there's totally something big going on in the background, so you better wait and find out later! The better writer will focus on the here and now, leaving the future for the future. That's not to say you can't play coy and tease things at all, but when a scene/character exists solely to exclaim "big secrets to come… later!" priorities have clearly gone awry.

Our Story Thus Far:

We begin with narration. It's been a long time since humans came to this world because witches keep them away in order to maintain peace and a world of light. However, the light is gone and the world is dark. Everything's dying, animals attack, etc etc. Ringo's shocked that this isn't the world of flowers she pictured. We, however, are excited because it's the perfect environment to be a hero. This pisses Ringo off, so we get penguin iced. It doesn't work. Our first plan of attack is to find Kururu. We hear someone, but need to be magic-juiced by Ringo to find them. She does, we hear Kururu in trouble, but she's far away. Ringo grows a tree, and we break off a chunk to use as a broom. Apparently sticks are hard to come by despite all the trees in the background. She magics it and we go flying off. We find Lillian and Kururu yelling at each other. Lillian pulls her trump card, running away, leaving a gravity-based magimon behind to crush Kururu. We slam into it and save her. Ringo steals our heroic introduction. We break the magic circle that had Kururu trapped and are then attacked by the magimon.

This is the last major new mechanic (I'm pretty sure). Before when there was a 'blank' card, it always meant that the enemy would be skipping a turn. Now, it means that they could be casting a dark spell on it. As far as the elemental strengths go, it's superior to all of them, so you're supposed to use Masaki's reflect to counter it. Not that a gray card always means a dark spell at this point, but especially for the dark-aligned enemies, it usually will.

After the battle, we're impressed with how awesome Masamune is. Kururu's thrilled to see us again. Kururu explains that when she got here too, the POWER OF DARKNESS was overwhelming. Magic Girl land's never been like this before, not even ever had night. We finally get back on subject, but Lillian's long since run off. Except Kururu explains that the magimon was attacking Lillian too. Kururu saved her, but she ran off. They explain that darkness corrupted it and it went berserk. We declare that the magical girl club will save the world. Elsewhere, Lillian can't believe we followed the Princess of Light here. She has to go report that the princess and that guy with a mysterious sword are here. She's also been reunited with her pig, uh… Chocorielle? I don't want to look up this French or whatever it's supposed to be. Ringo and Kururu are arguing over Blondie not taking this seriously enough. After we sum up the situation, Kururu comes to the conclusion that something bad has happened, and she doesn't know what. Thanks, Kururu.

We declare that all we can do is move forward. We point back in the direction we came, not amusing Ringo again. Kururu gets worked up when it comes out that we heard the spirits earlier when we used our locator spell, however, communication is one way. We can't talk to them, only listen. Mike gets us back on topic and tells us to set our priority, defeating evil, or saving witches (a choice). We go with saving witches. However, we're off in the boonies. We assume they'd go to the palace for safety, so that's our destination. Kururu has no idea what direction it's in though. Mike says it's in the direction of the sun, except… no sun. He guesses south, which also doesn't help much. However, Ringo and us Macgyver a compass out of our cellphones. On the other hand, it just spins randomly, so it's useless. Instead, we stab Masamune into the ground and go in the direction it falls when we let go. We're flying, so it's a fast trip anyway.

We learn about the places where spirits/elementals dwell as we go. They're holy lands, way too SAVAGE for people, but Kururu used to go play around in them all the time. We stop off at them on our way to the palace. The Ifrita one's a volcanic area with lava, heat, etc everywhere. We're protected by magic, but it's like a sauna with our sweat apparently. We get yet more info dumping about spirits as we go. Mainly, that they don't obey humans much, but the queen of magicland has their power, and Kururu's supposed to inherit it. Undina-land is full of waterfalls. We spend a long time describing how there's… waterfalls. And fog. It's apparently a paradise for spirits. We pass by Yggrasil on our way to lightning land. The big tree is apparently where witches and spirits are born. Also, when the peace of the world is disturbed, the spirits get pissed and ignore everyone but the queen apparently.

Ixion's turf is full of lightning. And more lightning. Exciting. Ringo points out that we've gone in a big circle. Our excuse is that we were listening to Mike's lecture. Kururu zaps us. A woman named Cecilia comes up in Mike's chastising. She's Kururu's best friend and the one who sent Mike to the human world. We declare that she must be okay still.

The girls are sleepy from all the traveling and time, so we decide to rest. They nap, we'll keep watch. Kururu says that the spirits must be troubled too, so they'll help us fix things before falling asleep. Ringo stays up a little longer to remark how nice we're being to Kururu and how we're keeping both their spirits up. While they nap, we stare at the sky and think about how creepy and soundless it is here. Also, how excited we are to be a hero. Yada yada, Kururu's our heroine, friends give us strength, etc.

The voices in our head say we're lacking something though. We decide it must be wisdom, and only afterward wonder who we're talking to. We get to wondering about the people back in human-land, which makes us sleepy. We fight it off by shouting hero oaths. Around hero's oath #1,254, we fall asleep. We wake up to another voice in our head, except someone's there this time. We slash at them, but they dodge. They're surprised we broke through her spell. She demands we hand over Masamune. We declare it's the power to seize our dream, so she can't have it. That apparently makes her realize who we are. She declares us a fool for daring to fight against a witch. She fireballs us. We reflect it, but she's a step ahead of us (a couple actually), and we get an elbow to the back of the head. Before she can finish us, Kururu saves our bacon.

The main thing to notice about Mavis is how little damage you do to her. This is how things are going to go from here out, basically. Until you crack the threshhold for damage by ramping up the combo multiplier, you're just going to be plinking them for no real damage, which gets into the poorly thought out design situation where you need to string together long combos (ie be completely dominating battles), while the battles are supposed to be getting harder. Instead, they pretty much get easier. So… oh well!

After beating her, it turns out she's still beating us up. Okay. That makes sense. We declare ourself to be the hero who'll save Witchland. That makes her laugh. She tells us to prove it by stopping the invasion of darkness. We say we will with Masamune, but she says nothing will change, sword notwithstanding, as long as "they" exist. Kururu tells us to ignore her because darkness tries to mess with your minds. She tells us to leave, unless we WANT to reawaken catastrophe. That strikes a chord with Kururu who recognizes it as some kind of fairy tale. She starts using a spell to turn our feelings into suffering or something. We start seeing one flash of blood after another. Kururu jolts us out of it, but our body's still dicked up. She tries to heal us, but the witch grabs her staff and pins Kururu down. Apparently she uses the 'sin' inside us. We take offense to that, summon all our will, and beg for the strength to save Kururu. The voices in our head grant us power, and we're freed from the spell. We try to attack the witch. She says humans aren't needed and that they can't afford to repeat the same error as before, so she's going to kill us. She shoots a super fireball, but someone yells to stop. It's Cecilia, and she says that priority #1 is stopping Mavis (the other witch). She demands to know why Mavis attacked us, including the princess, and then begins attacking her. Mavis defends herself and they both go flying into the air to have some kind of Nanoha/DBZ battle.

Cecilia demands to know if Mavis is responsible for the darkness. Mavis says she should believe that if she want to. Not helping things, lady. Ceilia tries to beat the answer out of her, but Mavis retreats. We try to give chase, but trip in all the flashing lights. We call Mavis a weak coward, but Ceilia says that if Mavis was serious, she'd have done a hell of a lot more damage. Kururu happily jumps into Ceilia's arms and spins around and around until momentum tosses her into a tree. She found us by Mike's magical bell. We try to hit on her to smooth things over between her and Kururu/Mike, and get smacked around a bit. Ringo, meanwhile, is having some kind of stroke.

Kururu introduces us as her lover. Ceilia asks if that's some kind of food. Hilarious Japanese jokes at their best. Blondie explains it means someone who's very important, so Ceilia says we're no match for her. Leaving that aside, Ceilia explains that Mavis used to be a top notch magical doctor who started messing around with bad stuff and was exiled around the time Kururu was born because she started messing with resurrection magic. Apparently that kind of magic could potentially destroy THE WHOLE MAGIC SYSTEM or something, so no witch uses it. Nobody has any idea why she wanted Masamune though. Ceilia is shocked when we tell her Masamune reflects magic. Kururu tries to explain that it's because she kissed us. Hearing that makes Ceilia start to have a stroke. But then she snaps out of it and asks Kururu what kissing is like. Good point to stop.