As for the Khurgas, I'm really curious how the Septian Church relates to them. They were shown to be very tolerant until now, but they also managed to merge their faith with the religious practices of those with different spiritual roots. But having a completely different main goddess makes any syncreticism effort by the Church much, much harder if downright impossible.
Interesting. Is the term in katakana or kanji? Just curious because the first thing that comes to mind when I hear Chinese Opera is 京剧, or Peking/Beijing Opera. Also gives Aaron's crossdressing role another cultural dimension. Early Peking Opera's female roles were all played by men and the practice continued even after the communist revolution. I'm sure though that Kabuki has similar practices.
It's kanji (女形) and yeah, that sort of thing is pretty similar in Japanese theatre as well; they had actual actresses for a time when kabuki was starting, before they were banned from performing and all the roles had to be played by men. Come to think, it's common in a lot of theatrical traditions I know much about. Classical Greek drama was all-male, the English theatre was so known for it that Shakespeare worked puns about it into some of his plays, etc.
Interestingly, Japan reversed the males-only thing early in the 20th century with the creation of the Takarazuka theatre troupe which is all-female.
Let's hope the last Kiseki arc is a Church arc so we can enjoy Gralsritter shenanigans to the max.
I'm still reasonably sure that the final arc is going to be Leman/Arteria so the odds are pretty good. They do have to step up the pace of introducing new Dominion though if we want to see twelve of them by the end; we've got six now and one of those is currently squatting on someone else's number. xD
New Kuro no Kiseki article: https://www.gematsu.com/2021/08/the-legend-of-heroes-kuro-no-kiseki-details-cao-lee-kurogane-and-grimcats-the-phantom-thief
Seems we're getting another Phantom Thief! I'm pretty excited as I always wondered if there were more out there than just Bleublanc.
Seems we're getting another Phantom Thief! I'm pretty excited as I always wondered if there were more out there than just Bleublanc.
I'm 99.9% sure that that's Judith, using her equivalent to Van's Grendel transformation that we saw in the Web CM. She sounds like she's using the idea of being a phantom thief as an excuse to play the role of Batman, targeting corruption in the Republic. Presumably there will be a few new wrinkles here since we just got a conceptually similar character in Ys IX with the adorable cat burglar White Cat.
Also, I see Cao is back to giving no fucks (not that he ever stopped) and it still weirds me out that he could be someone's type. Oh well, who am I to question Ashen's tastes, I guess. A nice tidbit is that he apparently uses the same Yuehua style that Aaron does, so now we have a bit more of an idea what variety that one entails since it seems to be what all the members of Heiyue practice. I am mildly concerned about something in his profile however: This mafia group that's mentioned as rapidly gaining influence in the Republic while ignoring the code of the underworld which Cao is taking action to oppose is named Armata... which could mess with my theory about the Garden and A(lamut). ;p
Hopefully, they don’t copy the same story beats as Ys IX’s chapter 2. I really don’t need another chapter of Kato lecturing to us about how the poor are lazy and need to work harder.
I'm not sure all of Heiyue practice the same style.
Cao's last photo in the article is also interesting, because the fan he's holding is a pretty iconic accessory associated with ancient Chinese tactictians/strategists - at least in modern popular depictions. And the character most often shown with that kind of fan is Zhuge Liang, again from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms though some might recognize him from the Dynasty Warrior franchise.
It's a little strange they're being coy about Grimcat's identity when the trailer literally shows Judith's transformation sequence into her.
Lelouche is a very common last name in Quebec. The version without the e has always bugged me.
Had a random thought: Van Arkride -> Vent Ark-rider -> 方舟乗りの風
If he's linked with the Merkava units that would explain why Bergard hangs around him.
Falcom occasionally likes to be coy about things at the same time as they flagrantly spoil others...
So, it seems that we have names for the people in the teaser video now and they're not following the Garden's naming convention... I'm not entirely willing to give up my theory about the Garden being a reference to Alamut but this Armata bunch is making one of the big points in support of it (that the Garden and 'A' are one in the same) extremely shaky, especially since Armata is definitely the bunch who are interested in 'fear'. At most it might be that they're related entities.
Had a random thought: Van Arkride -> Vent Ark-rider -> 方舟乗りの風
I see that and immediately think of the ARC Riders books, and really wish those had gotten a third novel because it kind of left things hanging just when the story was getting really interesting.
Well today’s news kind of threw a wrench into the Garden = A theory.
The main villain group is a new mafia organization called Armata that rules through fear. The most important people seem to be the leader (yet to be shown but probably the Aizen like guy from teaser), three executives, and two outside collaborators.
The Melchior guy gives me the Joker/Kefka vibes but the other two executives are a snoozefest.
The collaborators might be “garden” members. Arioch at least looks like one. I guess this puts me back to my original position of “garden” being the Second Act villains.
The collaborators might be “garden” members. Arioch at least looks like one. I guess this puts me back to my original position of “garden” being the Second Act villains.
It's interesting that the two identified as Armata collaborators rather than members have titles while the three executives do not. And yeah, my money is on the last guy seen in the teaser being the leader of the group and the person who Elaine encountered in Beyond the Beginning, since there's a distinct lack of cruciform swords seen anywhere in the revealed bunch and the narration made a point of describing her attacker's sword in detail.
Related note, we have a Melchior but we still need a Balthasar and a Caspar. Come on Falcom, don't leave us hanging. While you're at it, we've had a Porthos and an Aramis, where's our Athos?
Dengeki has a nice article recapitulating the characters and screenshots that have been introduced so far: https://dengekionline.com/articles/92778/
z_z
Unpacking everything in the livestream is gonna take some time (and more coffee) but the big surprise out of it is a trailer and it had a cameo appearance by Rixia. Wasn't seeing that coming. xD
EDIT: Okay, takeaways from all of that now that I've had some time to process it.
- The first half of the livestream was pretty much going over things we've already seen, including the very obvious dancing around Grimcats being Judith. The material on Grendel did confirm that the S in S-Boost is short for 'Shard' which fits with the whole lore explanation for what the XIPHA does.
- The second half of the stream had a long segment of playing around with the gameplay in one of the field areas we've seen in a lot of the footage (in the vicinity of Creil per the description) with Van, Agnes and Feri. It included our first look at the pause menu and messing around on the Orbment and Tactics screens.
- The date given for the part of the game we're seeing is July 9.
- Based on the description of one of the Arts (the Earth-based Acid Cloud) there's a new status ailment in the game called Corrosion.
- Van's Coin Bullet inflicts something called 'Hate Up'
- While we don't see it used, they scroll past Shadow Spear and we can see that it still has a chance to inflict Deathblow.
- Hajimari's QoL improvement of seeing elemental effectiveness in the Arts menu has been changed to show you the enemy's weaknesses in the info box instead. Same idea, different presentation.
- Command Battles can be escaped as smoothly as Action Battles (actually they're calling them Field Battles now) and if you were in that mode when fleeing, you'll be back in it when the next fight begins.
- The pause menu uses a similar input system that the combat system did in CS3-Hajimari, with everything assigned to its own button.
- Feri's equipped Hollow Core is named Vine, so we're three for three on names associated with demonic entities. We also got a bunch of Arts Driver names. Storm, Aqua, Amber, Flare, Celebrate and interestingly the EX system from the later Cold Steel games appears to be returning for these because the list mentions Crescent and Quartet EX. I guess those would belong to guest characters. We get to see the descriptions of the first four and they're all identified as granting 'basic Arts' for individual lower elements, though they show Arts from others as well.
- There's a Mirage Art identified as 'Argent Thorn' which makes me think it's either this arc's replacement for Silver Thorn or it's an upgrade to it; based on the 140 EP cost I lean towards the latter.
- Selecting a character triggers a nice animation where their XIPHA rotates around and then the back opens up to reveal the internals.
- When swapping Quartz around, you can see what Shard Skills will be unlocked through your point combination. Some of the skills at least have upgraded versions. For example we see 'Arts Starter' which grants ATS Up when activating the Shards. The base version has a 50% chance to trigger, the II version has a 75% chance and its effectiveness changes from (S) to (M).
- It looks like some of the familiar Quartz may either be gone or getting supplemented, as one of the Shard Skills is Hawk Eye which makes enemies visible on the map. Likewise Swordbreaker has the effect of the old Swordbreaker Fang. On the other hand, we see that the Blade-series Quartz are still present. The description we see of Corrosion Blade indicates that at least some Quartz are restricted in what Lines they can be set on.
- Mute Blade is now Space-based. Another new ailment shows up thanks to the Quartz lists and that's 'Fear/Terror'.
- The Orbment menu also shows off exactly what each Hollow Core's S-Boost ability does:
Mare (Multiple Works) - STR/ATS/SPD+10%, DEF/ADF+15%, Evasion/Critical +20%, Physical damage +15%
Aim (Remedy Breath) - Healing Arts/Crafts effectiveness +20%, ATS +10%, ADF +15%, Arts AoE +1
Vine (High Mobility) - MOV +10, STR/ATS/SPD +15%, Physical damage +15%
- Different difficulty settings can be set for Command and Field Battle, though the latter only has Easy/Normal/Hard. Right now the Command difficulty goes up to Nightmare.
- Tactics let you tell allies what to do when they're not being controlled. For Field Battle the options are to attack whoever the leader isn't targeting, to focus on the leader's target or to focus on defense. For Command Battle the options determine formation at the start of the fight.
- The official site updated and we now have an official romanization for our antagonists, Almata (rather than Armata). Also some footage of Grendel in action, yet the page for Barkhorn Bergard still has 'coming soon' on his battle clip sections.
- Related to the above, Otsuka Akio is confirmed to be voicing him. Also, the trailer showed more of that Craft of his and the character for Heaven appears as part of the animation. Which is of course part of Barkhorn's title 吼天獅子.
- Speaking of which, I'm going to sub the trailer once there's a clean version of it out there. For now, we see footage of Van and Agnes meeting when she hires him, there's various bits of battle footage, Van and Aaron fighting each other, Rixia shows up as I mentioned earlier (wearing a mask over the upper half of her face) and the last Almata guy is definitely the person Elaine fought as we get a look at his sword and it matches the description in Beyond the Beginning. Also, Judith-as-Grimcats both getting her Batman on and kicking a kaiju. And Barkhorn gets the last word when he tells someone (probably Van) that even if you try to look away, there are things you simply can't ignore.
I can't believe there's no "oraoraoraoraora!!!" during Grendel Van's mad punch combo S-Craft!
What's Van saying at the beginning? He keeps repeating something that sounds like "daroga" and he mentioned the Society if I'm not mistaken (Kesha, right?). Cool that he's already in the know, but given his line of work, I suppose it's not surprising.
Hate up sounds a lot like some kind of aggro mechanic. We already had bulky tank builds before, so if they lean in even more that'll be interesting. If nothing else it'll be nice not to resort to good ol' evade tanking again!
What's Van saying at the beginning? He keeps repeating something that sounds like "daroga" and he mentioned the Society if I'm not mistaken (Kesha, right?). Cool that he's already in the know, but given his line of work, I suppose it's not surprising.
He's talking about how in his line of work he doesn't care if his clients are bad people and he'll take jobs 'even if it's from X/Y/Z' where the list includes jaegers, Heiyue 'or even Ouroboros'. Then he ends with 'But you, you're different'.
In other words, whoever he's speaking to is someone really nasty and he wants to let them know it.
In other words, whoever he's speaking to is someone really nasty and he wants to let them know it.
My money's on someone who asked him to change orbal lamps.
Or Almata, I guess...
Edit: Some extended footage of the scenes in the PV plus older footage over here
