Ushi No Tane - Harvest Moon

First time in Celestia on the Rosch Brigade storyline and I'm in the sewers on the Specint side. So not very far, I guess?

Mostly because I honestly I don't believe Marco would ever be strong enough to just overpower EVERYONE. I mean, I can see him trying to, cos yeah, what happened was messed up if you went that path, but still, c'mon, there's just no way.

yeah, marco pretty much has no personality. however, raynie has two modes -- typically spunky "sexy-type" female character with little personality and daddy issues (homeland issues, but whatever), and sudden random romance mode. it seems totally out of what little character she has to just suddenly want to settle down and get married instead of saving the world. i don't like that. i really like eruca, though, since she's totally bad-ass, she kicks « Mr.Gourmet's hat », she's a developed character, she's not typically feminine in appearance or manner, and she's really independent. i have some serious issues with the representation of women in raynie, but i think eruca more than makes up for it.

haha, i saw a review of this game review how progressive it is, and they took a lot of issue with eruca's (relatively practical, considering JRPG character design) outfit, but none with raynie's (totally impractical and sexed-up) outfit. they actually took a lot more issue with eruca than i do, which is kind of interesting. though, the game is deeply problematic when it comes to race, i have to admit.


the boss battle from the AH final chapter that made me depressed was when you had to kill viola. ;o; so tragic!

Yeah...Marco kind of was just...there. I dumped Raynie from my party as soon as I could, am I a bad person? I was like, SHE DOES NOTHING FOR ME CHARACTER-WISE. And I just went into things overleveled anyway, so it didn't really matter who I took with me. My only complaint with Eruca is that I wish I could have her in my party more often. Her character is awesome(I liked her appearance and her personality), and she actually had the best moves in my opinion.
As for Raynie suddenly being in love with Stocke, I SAW THAT COMING. I mean, I could already tell she was going to be LOL LOVE INTEREST, when the only times she ever listened were if he said something and whatnot, then when At Journey's End came and she was talking to him, I was like THIS IS GOING TO BE AN AWKWARD CONFESSION, ISN'T IT? That bad ending was another one I didn't actually accept either. Just...like you said, it all happened so fast, even if Raynie really did OMG LOVEEE~ Stocke, he's always been distant, so HOW DID HE SUDDENLY JUST FALL IN LOVE WITH HER AND DECIDE TO NOT SAVE THE WORLD ANYMORE?? You know a couple I wanted to see more? Eruca and Garland. I seriously thought they'd make a more interesting and believable couple than Stocke x Raynie ever did.

They really didn't like Eruca? xD
And yeah, it is.

Haha, that was before the last chapter though. xD
But no, yeah, I was sad Viola had to die. There were several characters, I was like, "NO, WHY ARE YOU DYING?! /flips a table"

wasn't she just some random girl he knew once, too? i mean, they strongly imply that he had feelings for her, but i was under the impression that he didn't even know her that well, certainly not well enough to want to RANDOMLY KILL ALL THE CHARACTERS RAWR over her, especially since his feelings of being part of a team seemed stronger than his feelings for mimel? i don't get it. it was pretty hilarious, though. i was like "so, marco, what, you're gonna kill us all with your useless support magic, or what? bring it on!" lol

i pretty much dumped marco and raynie as soon as i could. i think i dumped marco first because raynie is marginally better in battle, but i used aht and eruca (who does need to be in your party much longer! whhyyyy atlus, whhhyyyy? ;o;) pretty much all that i could because they kick « Mr.Gourmet's hat ». which is great for a JRPG, since (non-obnoxious, strangly worldly) little girls who are amazing fighters and (self-sufficient, practical, not stereotypical to either extreme) princesses who have strong attack magic and options for strong physical attacks (seriously, i loved how you could choose between guns with high magic or guns with high attack for her, it made her extremely versitile in battle) instead of just wimpy healing magic -don't- otherwise exist. well, maybe they do, but they are few and far between, believe me. and i'm super glad that eruca doesn't suffer from the same thing that marle does in chrono trigger, where she's a tomboy and is being rebellious just to be rebellious and omg hates girly things, gaiz!! eruca is a much richer character and a much better princess model, i think. (but my fave CT character is ayla, who is overly sexualized, yes, but totally kicks « Mr.Gourmet's hat » as the strongest attacker in the game and has thse wonderful moments of depth and philosophical waxing~ also, there's no real division of gender in her society, so yay!)

err~ anyway. raynie. yeah, the fact that she was going to be the love interest was almost as obvious from the start as OMG ERUCA'S YOUR SISTER??!!!!, but it wasn't developed. at. all. it came out of nowhere. it's like atlus was like "yeah, we have too many really interesting female characters, so we need to throw in a stereotypical sexy spunky girl who is randomly willing to give up the world for ~~true love desu~~!1 (we also need protea as a really poor representation of an evil queen to balance out eruca being a really awesome princess)" and then stocke going along with it! well, that's kind of our fault as players, but still! there was -nothing- between them until that moment, except that we as players can read the tropes of "obvious love interest" pretty clearly.

kiel and the rest of the rosch brigade was kind of a *sniffle* moment, too, but not nearly as much as viola for me. something about knight-templar types really get to me, haha. (as my love of lady blackpearl [LoM] evidences, i'm sure~ and my love of eruca, she shows some definite tendencies towards that personality type) i was like "NOOOO WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU FEEL LIKE YOU HAVE TO DO THIS? FOGET ABOUT ALL YOUR MEN WHO DIED! FORGET ABOUT NOAH! LIIIIVVVEEEE!! ;o;" ....but i had to kill her anyway.
viola's another really good representation of women, i think. she's pretty great~

as for eruca x garland eh. others ship it, but i'd like to think that eruca is either « Squishy » or too focused on running her country to get married. really, she's pretty much the only character to show no romantic or sexual interest at all, certainly of the main ones (and even of the side characters, raul was totally sleeping with his secretary, lol). even aht has a little girl crush on stocke! i guess gafka doesn't, either, but he isn't all that well-develped as a character, i don't think. sure, he has one major issue, but then he gets over it relatively quickly. otherwise, he's just really stoic and bound by ~duty~, you know? (i never really used him much, anyway...this is probably the one game where i actually use magic and such more than i use just big, heavy physical attacks) i could imagine eruca having kids with garland just to have a next generation to perform the ritual, though, since she's pretty hardcore like that. though, by the end, we don't even know if that will be an issue, since i think we are safe on at least two counts there. (don't read this until you get the true ending! everyone's super fertile in this game, so you know that once stocke returns, he's going to have a million kids with raynie. ...that and the ritual might not even be needed bcause of the conuts guy.)

Yes. They used to work together or something before she was injured and forced to be a waitress. I don't know if I could say he really did it out of his obvious crush on her, or because Mimel and him were supposedly old work buddies/sort of friends, and he felt kind of like Stocke just...didn't care at all? Although he seemed pretty easygoing, so it seemed so strange that suddenly he wasn't anymore, or that he lost all rationality. That didn't change the fact that no matter how angry and resentful he could ever get, there was no way he could be capable of murdering anyone. His attacks suck, he wasn't really strong one way or the other, and just...yeah. Am I bad person for sort of wanting the rest of the characters to beat some sense in him in his bad ending?

I had only ever kept Marco in my party because he had useful stat boosters for me, so I had him regularly raise my character's magic. Though I have to admit, other than that, I hated using him. He was fine in the beginning, since he was one of the few that could pull enemies forward with grapple, but he really got stuck with some not so fantastic special attacks. So then he sort of became the person that either raised everyone's stats or healed people for me...yep. orz
But no, yeah. I loved using Eruca and Aht in battle. They got some pretty awesome moves, and it was nice that they also helped rake up the combos, I spam some of their attacks to do that, so then by the time I use a spell or powerful attack, it's just like ridiculous. xD

Oh yeah, I agree. It was just...I mean, even though you could see it coming, there was pretty much no substance there. It's kind of annoying where RPGs for some reason feel the need to throw in LOL LOVEEE. People can love a game, story, characters without things like that being forced down our throats.
I don't understand the point of Protea. She wasn't a very good puppet or villain for that matter, even the other characters seemed annoyed with her. xD
We can never escape from tvtropes.

Poor Kiel. I sort of wanted to punch Hugo, so when his battle came, I just mopped the floor with him, haha. :'D
I could understand where Viola was coming from, but it didn't make her death any less tragic or sad. I love strong female characters, one of my weaknesses. And I loved how in one of the quests, she was just like TAKE MY JOURNAL, and Stocke was just all REALLY? ISN'T THAT KIND OF PERSONAL? It was nice that she wasn't afraid of people knowing private things about her.

I mean, I would've probably accepted a Eruca x Garland pairing is all. It was one that would've made more sense to me, especially politically. I just...I don't know, with all the odd pairings going on, I wish more of them made more sense to me. And now I have the mental image of Eruca making sacrifice babies, thanks for that. xD
But no, yeah, out of all the characters, Eruca probably isn't the most romantically interested and more work oriented than anything else, I agree.
And the Aht crush thing, I could tolerate that, in small doses, lol. Though she also started getting on my nerves a little with other things. I can understand her wanting to protect Stocke and not be sacrificed, but after awhile, I just wanted her to stoppp. Every timeline it was the same thing, she'd start shouting just as you were going to be told who you really were or your real role. So then when you face off with Heiss at the final chapter, I just had enough of it. But then at the same time, I have to keep reminding myself she's just a child, if she's being a little selfish, it's because she's still young. :'D
/but I love spoilers
I love cocoanuts guy. Mostly because his quest was a more odd one to me, just because if you do the wrong thing, you get rewarded by him, do the right thing, he yells at you, then finally you come to an even better solution and the guides end up being the ones that really thank you. xD
And seriously? No one has children ever? Wow. And jeez, I hope him and Raynie don't have tons of babies together. xD
Lol edit: I thought you said infertile, omg. And then when I got the ending I'm like IT'S LIKE BABIES ARE RAINING FROM THE SKIES, WHAT...so I looked back at your post. xD