Elm Knight: Brevity is the Soul of Wit

Starting off this session, Rick is on foot, with slightly different controls. Instead of all the complex mecha controls from earlier, Rick gets a gun and a knife, Z/X respectively. I can't help but feel like Rick's combat abilities are mimicking Chirico Cuvie from Armored Trooper VOTOMS, but that doesn't make sense. People wander around the area, and they talk to Rick if he touches them. First guy asks if Rick is a spy.

These scenes are all animated, but no voice.

Doors function much the same way. Here's Doug again. He says something about riding on a "landmover" which I saw last time, but I assumed meant random. I assume by context that it means the mecha. Apparently he thought that Rick was a scouting party. And then I hit upon a problem. Some of the more complex characters are so scrunched up in this game's tiny font as to be unreadable. They formally introduce themselves to each other and Doug suggests he repaints his, as it's painted in the imperial colors.

Another door, someone else to kind of talk to. Cam, I think. Not talk as much as Rick comments on his massive size and Cam comments on Rick's tiny size. Rick leaves and wonders what kind of people they're raising. Something curious about this. The game was setting itself up as a RPG/FPS game, but there is zero RPG to this. This base camp is basically a straight shot with optional talking to NPCs.

Sofia's in the third door. Rick, the paragon of intelligence, asks her about the dangerous giant man they're keeping. She says that's Cam, he's not dangerous, he's a friend. Rick asks if she's sure he isn't going to eat people, might even be something about how he heard they do that. Evil empire says alien life forms are dangerous, film at eleven. Sofia talks about how they found him on the street when he was a baby and protected him. He might very well still be a baby, since they talk of him being a good playmate and a child.

More talking to people. This time it's a guy named Rondo Aima, who I mentioned before as being a possible pun. He's in a building that looks like a hanger, according to Rick. They all have the exact same graphics. He's the information officer, and Rick infers he was in the imperial army at one point. Rando found it too strict. The room is said to be a correspondence room, but he seems to be jamming MPS here, which means it's some sort of sci-fi radio room. And that also answers something about MPS, it's something you can jam. The jammer only works in a short distance, which seems to me like something an enemy could easily exploit. Rick also asks what does he do if the magic user isn't human. The answer is Doug gets sent out.

This is Riru, which is supposed to translate as "Lill". She's a doctor, probably magical doctor, who can heal you so you're a-okay. Rick finds something offputting about her. So either she's the type of doctor who seems like she'd violate medical ethics with her patients or she's going to turn out to be a traitor later. There's also a cook, Moradi. I don't care about Moradi at all.

After some wandering around, thanks to the radar on the GUI being confusing, I meet Bea. He's not happy to see Rick. I guess he's a radio operator, because he's more concerned with the rumor that Rick is a spy. I just can't bring myself to care about this little subplot. We're missing the part of the game where it's explained why Rick betrayed the imperial army or even the part where he was in the imperial army.

At this point, I'm lost as to what I can do. My radar seems to point to a location down a "door" path, which in theory should change rooms. The problem is I can't go down it. And people can box you in, though you can unblock them by talking to them, which isn't annoying at all. At least it seems like I can talk to people again, even if they have nothing of value to say the second time around, or I can't talk to them at all. Elf, which I'm just going to ahead and assume is a magical elf in Rick's head, seems concerned about one room for some reason. Though as you'll see in a moment, seems quite useless.

At this point, I'm getting ready to file this away under Japanese obtuseness and play another game, but I check Youtube, and oh, look, I missed a door. Considering that a ton of these doors aren't enterable, that's annoying. It's Serena, and oh, look, Rick just accidentally peeked at her changing, it's PG-13 at least. It is of course, the most elegant dialog ever made, and if I translate it, you will die weeping tears of joy. More wandering, until I hit a random tile.

If you feel this all is excessive, reminder, this is the 130th screenshot I took this session out of some 400.

More dialog, this time involving an old lady. She sells food to the rebels. Apparently she does it because she won't forget what Sofia did for the "Sarian King's daughter". Presumably her, and now she gives them food. I like her, Rick doesn't, because she called him boy. She goes off and Rick muses about Serena, calling her a princess sarcastically. It must be out loud, because she hits him in the back of the head. They argue, trying to get to some sort of understanding. I don't care about this relationship whatsoever.

He asks about the old lady, and she says that in older times people believed that magical powers were the result of people consorting with demons, even if they know this is superstition now. Not believing her, Rick asks Elf, who seems to just say that they didn't go halfway. Serena, it seems, can't hear Elf like Rick. Rick ticks her off by saying something like "halfway time. Hungry." And then we get a glamour shot of her because...Rick is hungry for her?

Night. Rick muses about how strange this all is for him and how it would be if he were back at school now. Guess that confirms my one theory. He decides to take a walk. Yes...because what we needed was another hour walking around this camp. Oh, a scene transition happens without any input from me.

Cam approaches, the giant man. His dialog is interesting, since it's done differently and is simple. Rick asks him to answer him honestly about a question...do you think we're tasty? He answers with, "eat, not, flavor, not understand." Rick doesn't understand his answer and asks him about it. He answers with the similarly understood "unlike, human, eat, not." This seems to get through to Rick. Cam follows up by saying Sofia would get angry. This seems to convince Rick, who then asks if someday they could become friends. Cam agrees. Rick says he'll go off the bathhouse. Oh, good.

The bathhouse is also the cafeteria, at least the building I thought as the cafeteria. Apparently Cam was following him around, as he leaves as Rick approaches. Only, I can't enter it. It turns out I'm supposed to go to Rondo's place. I didn't realize it at first because Rick sneaks a peek...through a freaking sliding door. What the heck? Turns out Rondo is probably a spy. Wait, they weren't just suspicious of Rick just because he was an outsider, there's an actual spy? I should probably tell this to someone, shouldn't I? But most of the doors are unenterable. Bea is asleep and while Serena is in the hanger, the conversation is pointless.

Another scene transition happens without any input, this time it's Doug. He basically just tells Rick to go to sleep because otherwise there'll be rumors. Then Rick has either a strange briefing or a dream. It's confusing, apparently they recived information that a special vehicle is heading towards the base. Find out how likely it is that it'll approach. Rick and Doug will deal with it. Rondo tells them this despite the spy? And tells them it might be the precursor to a larger force. Then it's the game again, only there's more dialog. So much dialog between Rick and Doug that Sofia yells at them.

Combat, holy crap gameplay again. Reminder, since I started this entry this has been the first time I've gotten actual gameplay. That's well over an hour of nothing. As far as playing the game goes, this might genuinely be a problem because I'm rusty at the actual shooting part. But gosh, when I can actually play this, it's fun. There's just something about ducking through trees shooting missiles at enemies that's a solid game loop. It's just not so good that it can help hours of downtime.

The basic idea is unchanged from the first encounter, there are more enemies than you have reasonable firepower to deal with. At least in theory. I did not use my missiles very effectively. I think they can only make one or two turns, with some of my missiles just dying off. Also, there are trees you can smash, so indicated by a different color block on the minimap. Great design.

More dialog. More dialog. Let me play your stupid game! Sami, the robot's voice, informs me that the point we're heading towards is nearby. Rick says I have to cut it down since it's a MPS jammer. Then there's a cutscene. Apparently Roy, Rick's brother, is there or something, because Rick starts musing about him. Sami says something about a launch, and Doug calls in saying it's a trap. There are too many of them, we have to escape. More dialog, if this were a trap they would be pummeling my corpse now. I don't really care anymore. Another cutscene, Doug is yelling at Rondo, as Rondo is accusing Rick of being a spy.

Different area, more dialog. Elf suggests that Rondo is the traitor. A very shocking implication that matters a great deal since he's done four things in this game and two of them are suspicious to me, the player. We should hurry, says Rick before talking more. Finally, combat again. This area is suspiciously clear of enemies...and oh, damn it, more dialog.

Someone's attacking me? Who's attacking me? Ah, damn it, I'm dead and it wasn't a plot loss. I don't need to worry about saving apparently, dying puts you back at the beginning of the stage with full health and ammo. Which does diffuse the tension considerably. Stealth mode? Stealth mode. Holy crap, there's just some massive missile spam going on in certain sections. If I was reading the dialog at the time I would have known that though, so that's my fault for making sure I could read this crap later.

I find the path leading towards a pillar, and now there's more dialog. Rick meets a Donaku Ramon, the leader of the rebel army subjugation force. He's captured Rick, somehow. Now Rick is in a jail. Donaku is the interrogator. It's novel seeing these words (relating to an interrogation) in this context, but they're not especially interesting. Rick says he won't tell them anything, so you'll have to kill him. I believe him, his character archetype wouldn't let him do that. Donaku says if he tells him one thing he wants to know, he'll help him die. Wow...I have slightly underestimated the writing here.

This dialog's weird. Right after that Rick says money cannot help, which confuses me, but Donaku asks what he means and then asks if he won't think about the rebels' base. Is he playing mind games? Is Rick? Or is this just some complex Japanese-ism I don't understand? He then says he expects something good from him in the morning. Well, Rick then goes to bed, but stares at the ceiling...

And his brother shows up. It's been a while, and they get a long greeting. And then he says he's going to help Rick escape. Roy's going to die horrible, isn't he? Rick doesn't quite understand at first, thinking he means the rebel army is going to try to get him out in 2 or 3 days, but no, Roy says the rebels are going to make a surprise attack tomorrow. The imperial intelligence network underrated them. It takes Rick asking him if he joined the rebel army to figure it out that Roy's on his side. Then Rick asks something like "the rebel army's leader, the Sarian king's daughter". Which I guess might mean Sofia, judging by past context. Then Roy mentions Bloom, which is Sofia and Serena's last name, and then it clicks for me.

A realization that I had earlier but dismissed in favor of a vague Votoms allusion I wasn't sure of. This is a Star Wars knock-off. Rick is Luke Skywalker, Serena/Sofia is Leia divided into two people, one containing the polite upper societal aspect, the other containing the rough and tumble tomboy. Doug is Han Solo. Cam is Chewbacca. Rondo is Lando. Elf is Obi-Wan. Sami is probably one of the droids, maybe both assuming no other droid candidate comes up. Some of these feel like stretches to me, but enough of this comes off as right that it's no coincidence.

Anyway, Rick mentions a "Neeku ruler", which is just more stuff I don't recognize. Roy just says they'll see. The next day there's more talking, and Roy does his little breakout. He's coming with, guess his position was compromised. Seems that the Neeku ruler is someone the rebel army should be aware of. Judging by the way they talk, it might be that Sofia or Serena should be the Neeku ruler. Talking about how they'll escape, Elf talks to Rick but inside his head so Roy wonders what's going on.

Rick says he'll explain later, and then Sami tears open the cell. I guess the robot is sentient? Neither is exactly interesting. Roy then reveals that it was all Rando's fault, by himself he made the action. Now we're outside, in the mech, and there's still more dialog. Roy has his own mech. They talk about how they're going to get out and then Rick notices a jewel under his seat. Roy admonishes him for the delay, gotta stop Rondo, but first Sami needs to say a wall of text just telling us that Rondo was the spy. Roy says something about how strange his computer is, before saying they need to put down Rondo.

But before we can escape we need to take out Donaku, after the long dialog. In a boss fight since he has a truly giant mecha. There's a boss fight. It's okay, you basically just try to avoid being in the direct line of sight of a 2x2 size mech. While this is interesting in theory, since you should be drained from the previous fight, in practice if you're lacking for missiles you'll probably just die anyway and the resurrection system will kick in.

More text after the fight. Rick is concerned about Roy, but he's fine, guess his mech was damaged. By how concerned Roy is with Rick's computer, I assume there's something special about Sami, but we can't worry about that now because of how many enemies there are. I sure am glad that this is being shown via text box. Doug shows up, I guess he killed enough. Doug's been looking for him, something about him being stupid and a spy, possibly a stupid spy, possibly he's been stupid about the spy thing. Roy's introduction is quite casual. He just casually brings himself up and says he'll be coming with, when Doug realizes he's here, he asks who he is and Rick tells him he's his older brother. They argue of course, but they arrive there at base camp.

This game is shaping up to be incredibly tedious. The game itself is fine, there's just so much talking. I wouldn't care for the amount of dialog and the speed if this were in English. I hope this changes soon, otherwise I might cut this short. My time-period standard for this sort of presentation and story over gameplay, Traffic Department 2142, was not this wordy to my memory, especially not in-level. I also figured out how to save in-game, but who knows if that'll prove necessary?

This Session: 1 hour 50 minutes

Total Time: 3 hours 50 minutes