daniel
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verdite.bsky.social
daniel
@verdite.bsky.social
16 followers 36 following 120 posts
🏳️‍⚧️ he/him 🏳️‍⚧️・EN/日本語・RPGs, adventure games, guy who thinks everyone should play Shadow Tower
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verdite.bsky.social
been playing DQVII and collecting screens of animals "lying down" use your imagination, kids
Dragon Quest VII screenshot of an injured wolf presumably lying down in pain, possibly passed out, but it's just the normal standing sprite rotated 90 degrees Dragon Quest VII screenshot of a horse lying down in a human bed but it's just the standing sprite rotated 90 degrees
January 30, 2026 at 4:57 PM
verdite.bsky.social
122 hours later and i've done everything. both of the traveler fights were done with Weaponmaster Castti, Dancer Hikari, Knight Ochette (mostly just doing utility, though), and Scholar Temenos; i ended up following a guide for the Vide fights because it got a bit beyond my scope at that point lol.
Octopath Traveler II screenshot showing all of the Extra Battles completed
January 25, 2026 at 8:02 PM
verdite.bsky.social
posting my setup for Octopath Traveler II's (base game) superboss. six hours of attempts to even get to phase two before using any nuts, but after i did that--focusing on raising Castti's attack and Temenos' + Throné's speed--it died very quickly.
January 21, 2026 at 5:01 PM
verdite.bsky.social
可愛い...ブルアカありがとう
September 20, 2025 at 5:06 PM
verdite.bsky.social
beat Octopath's final boss on my second try, using this setup. glad i stuck to my guns with Therion being a Scholar literally just because i wanted it.
phase 1 team: Scholar Therion, Sorcerer Cyrus, Merchant Alfyn, Knight H'aanit phase 2 team: Apothecary Primrose, Warmaster Olberic, Starseer Ophilia, Runemaster Tressa
September 4, 2025 at 2:15 AM
verdite.bsky.social
Bokujou Monogatari, year 2 Summer
July 25, 2025 at 3:15 AM
verdite.bsky.social
i love how N1's debut game already perfectly encapsulated their consistent "extremely mid but extremely fucking funny" spirit
screenshot from Marl Oukoku no Ningyouhime (Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure). Cornet just crawled up to the castle bathroom through a toilet. Kururu says "C'mon. A cute girl should NOT be saying stuff like 'covered in [shit].'" screenshot from Marl Oukoku no Ningyouhime (Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure). Kururu says, about a cowering, defenseless old man, "Kill this bastard."
June 19, 2025 at 8:49 PM
verdite.bsky.social
finished reading AIR for the first time. my expectations were kind of low because i was extremely fan of Maeda's parts in MOON or ONE. (but, his parts of Kanon were generally pretty good), so i was worried about how it'd go without Hisaya. i ended up being pleasantly surprised!
May 23, 2025 at 4:31 PM
verdite.bsky.social
take me to 遠野ワールド
April 28, 2025 at 1:39 PM
verdite.bsky.social
finished replaying Megami Tensei II. definitely a comfort food game for me and i'm still stunned by how fully realized the series aesthetic is here. felt like i got even more out of it now that i've played wizardry, too.
April 16, 2025 at 3:33 PM
verdite.bsky.social
wrote a whole mess of (spoiler) thoughts on Minagoroshi no Otome after finishing it. it's definitely something! verdite-castle.neocities.org/posts/2025-0...
screenshot of Minagoroshi no Otome. Serena says, "Don't you think bullying is just sooo uncool?"
March 30, 2025 at 4:03 PM
verdite.bsky.social
wrote a bit about how much fun i had replaying Dark Chronicle, one of my childhood favorites. verdite-castle.neocities.org/posts/2025-0...
screenshot of the dungeon level select screen in the post-game dungeon, Zelmite Mines. this level is called "Hell, 1st district," which i'm pretty sure i responded to with "huh?" talking to a dragon monster while transformed into a dragon monster. the monster tells you, "Could you please not talk to me?"
March 20, 2025 at 4:13 PM
verdite.bsky.social
randomly generated golf making me go across the entire level >>>
March 11, 2025 at 5:37 PM
verdite.bsky.social
go my Steve
February 21, 2025 at 3:27 PM
verdite.bsky.social
Chaos is such a little bitch compared to, like, half the random encounters in the final dungeon lol
February 20, 2025 at 3:39 AM
verdite.bsky.social
back to my roots by playing Famicom FF1 with my favorite stupid party comp
February 15, 2025 at 4:28 PM
verdite.bsky.social
SaGa 2 finished ☺️ so much fun
February 14, 2025 at 1:45 AM
verdite.bsky.social
SaGa 2 is awesome so far
February 11, 2025 at 4:28 AM
verdite.bsky.social
このゲームをプレイすると段々アホになりそう
February 8, 2025 at 6:27 PM
verdite.bsky.social
クソ文章からの即死
February 4, 2025 at 5:52 PM
verdite.bsky.social
Shijou Takane themed cars in Choro Q 1 and 2 ☺️
February 2, 2025 at 4:31 AM
verdite.bsky.social
played Akalabeth
Lord Luc, Thou hast proved thyself worthy of knighthood, continue play if thou doth wish, but thou hast acomplished [sic] the main objective of this game... ... call California Pacific Computer at (415)-569-9126 to report this amazing feat! Press -SPACE- to cont.
January 16, 2025 at 4:09 AM
verdite.bsky.social
i finished replaying Mana Khemia 2 for the first time in about eight or nine years, so i jotted down some thoughts i have on the game from my perspective as a freak Atelier fan who likes Lilie and Rorona the most.
i'm a real Atelier boomer, so while i can see why Mana Khemia 2's combat is view as the high water mark for the series and i do appreciate it, i also prefer more item-based combat like with Arland or even Salburg (unhinged person talking). MK2's combat is definitely much better than the other post-Iris games in terms of prizing item usage, but it's still a very character skill-based affair. the character skills are definitely fun to use, though, especially with Ulrika's team where you have multiple ways to buff, debuff, and manipulate time card skills to your benefit. the game is easy, but it's easy in a fun way, because it's always fun to break the game over your knee. that really only holds true for Ulrika's team, though--Roze's team is almost total crap, which makes playing his route feel more irritating because you don't even have a fraction of the tools that Ulrika's route gives you. and for what! Lilia is useless because half the enemies in the game resist ice elemental attacks and that's all she has. no one on the team can tank. there's no way to mitigate damage. this game's balancing just leaves me scratching my head. i will also note that the alchemy synthesis, despite being very baby mode easy Atelier, is actually really fun in a way that everything from Iris 1 to Mana Khemia 1 failed to capture. i think a lot of this is due to how the game rewards you for getting 100 Ether Level on every item which, while not being difficult, is enjoyable to do while zoning out for a few hours. there's some minmax-y stuff you can do, but none of that is necessary for any of the content in the game. we can't all be Arland, though, so i'll happily take Mana Khemia 2's alchemy for what it is. Mana Khemia 2's writing, at its best, feels like the writers sat down and tasked themselves with making the player feel like they're having a stroke. this is at its most evident in, well, the entirety of Ulrika's route--the characters are all horrible people, they all hate each other, they're constantly verbally and physically abusing each other, and almost nothing serious happens until the very very end. the character quests are truly baffling: Peperon and Gotou, as a giant muscled man and a stuffed animal, are slathered in oil and wrestling for about twelve hours; Chloe is trying to summon a demon, succeeds only to have it possess her body, and nobody in the atelier believes her because her normal personality is indistinguishable from that of a demon's; Ena gets kidnapped by Gunnar--one of his professors!--and has a chip implanted in his head to brainwash him. Ulrika's main story only has a final boss because she smacks her baby mana and makes him throw a tantrum. the entire rest of the route is just people arguing and wasting time. it's all absurd, and it's this absurdity that makes Mana Khemia 2 shine. unfortunately this writing is also extremely inconsistent; Roze's route is, in comparison, really hard to sit through. this is because it tries to take itself entirely too seriously, kind of, but also this attempt at seriousness is half-hearted at best, which ends up making it the worst of both worlds. Roze's cast is also much weaker, mostly in the sense that there is a serious lack of whimsy in that atelier. almost every scene in Roze's route is just dragged down by Lilia's all-consuming presence. she sucks. she's so, so heterosexual and irritating. Satou Rina's voice only helps so much. why does she fawn over Roze so much when it's clear he isn't insterested? who even likes her? she's exhausting, and that feeling of exhaustion ends up coloring the entire route. it is easy to see that Roze's route is the team's attempt to capture that wider "normie" RPG audience that the entire Iris trilogy and Mana Khemia 1 were so slavishly devoted to courting, which i will forever maintain was a gigantic mistake for Atelier's identity. Mana Khemia 2, in its attempt to have it both ways--normie RPG with Roze and traditional Atelier with Ulrika--feels like it's trying way too hard to stretch itself in two opposing directions. while that does piss me off, i also feel like, at this point in the series (speaking about when MK2 was released), at least there was SOME attempt to capture that real Atelier feeling again. up to MK2's release, the only attempt at 'serious' storytelling in Atelier that really, truly, 100% worked for me because of its seriousness was Hermina and Culus, and i'm one of only five people in the world who played that game. and it's also clear that H&C was not the blueprint for anything that came after it in terms of measured, emotional storytelling. so Mana Khemia 2 is better than nothing, is what i'm saying. if it's a choice between slop like Iris 2 and half-slop like MK2, i'll take the latter any day. i can view this game fondly in retrospect because i know that Atelier as a series managed to fully course correct with Arland, which lets me place Mana Khemia 2 as a kind of uneven step in the right direction. and it's got Chloe, who is easily one of my absolute favorite characters in the series. not only is she completely unhinged, but she also has an incredible ASMR voice courtesy of Gotou Yuuko. she frequently manages to swing from sounding sweet to sounding like she's about to beat you with a rock in the span of a single text box, and it's awesome. Chloe alone is enough to catapult this game into good standing, as far as i'm concerned.
January 13, 2025 at 6:43 PM
verdite.bsky.social
Fantasian 100% finished after 99 hours👍
January 6, 2025 at 2:59 AM
verdite.bsky.social
i recently finished Fantasian (technically--i'm still working through NG+ in order to beat the superboss, but i've finished the main story) and i just had to write down my thoughts about it. definitely my favorite RPG released since Demon's Souls in 2009. i'm so glad this game exists.
i don't know how Sakaguchi and the rest of the crew at Mistwalker managed to make not only their best game, one of the best RPGs of all time, and the perfect swan song to the careers of multiple legends in the medium, all while having it go so unnoticed. this game deserves ten times the recognition of any of the slop Square Enix has churned out since, like, 2010. (even that's only being generous because i like FFXIII.) in a perfect world Fantasian would sell eleven bajillion copies and the FFVII remake would not exist. every single part of the game is packed with so much love for RPGs as a whole, in a way that can only be accomplished by people this knowledgeable and skilled. it really feels like they all sat down and wrote a huge list of everything they've ever loved about making and playing video games, and casted some crazy black magic in order to make everything fit together perfectly. there's SO MUCH stuff in this game, and none of it feels out of place. the combat works like a dream; people complain about its difficulty, but Fantasian is just a game that takes the problem solving nature of turn-based combat seriously and it expects the same from the player. no, you don't NEED a guide to get through the bosses in the second half of the game; i was able to feel my way through most of them on my first or second try just by thinking a few turns ahead. the game never feels like it's TOO hard--it's perfectly tuned to challenge you without making things feel unfair. if you're not supposed to beat a boss yet, due to a gap in level or whatever else, it telegraphs that quickly enough for you to know not to waste your time bashing your head against it. boss gimmicks are telegraphed just enough for you to understand what tactic to take without holding your hand, and if a boss DOES have a gimmick, the game will always let you know. i can't stress enough how perfectly tuned this game is to challenge you without being unfair. at the same time the game doesn't baby you by letting you overlevel; it kneecaps your experience gain after you outlevel the enemies in a way reminiscent of Suikoden, but it feels like this mechanic is used to a much more purposeful end in Fantasian because it does actually challenge you. it doesn't let you outgear, either, because gear progression is also tightly controlled. instead of feeling restrictive, though, this approach really works. a lot of this is due to how you're allowed to freely respec your characters' Not Sphere Grids to fit whatever a particular encounter demands, and there WILL be a use case for every single skill a character can learn no matter how niche it may seem. you also can't, unlike FFX, grind until every character can fulfill every role and just faceroll everything. a lot of this shakes out to feel like you're playing a kind of FFX hardtype, which may not work for everyone, but it really satisfies my appetite for problem solving in a way that's just enthralling. i would zone out for hours going from boss to boss and running through every problem that they would throw at me in a state of perfect contentment. the galaxy brain mechanics aren't just limited to bosses either; the game's Dimengion system, where you store and avoid random battles until you hit the limit on the number of monsters you can stash away, really changes how you approach dungeons. in the early game, you can turn it on while you're going from the last save point to the boss so you don't hamper your party's status on the way; you can turn it on when you're backtracking and don't want to have to deal with combat for a bit; you can just turn it off when you're lost and getting annoyed. importantly, though, you don't outright avoid combat forever--eventually that box is going to fill with enemies and you'll have to fight them all at once. it's a great kind of risk-reward that i've never seen before in an RPG, and i really love the idea. while Fantasian's combat is far and away its greatest virtue, it's far from lacking in every other respect too. it should go without saying that the music is absolutely fucking incredible--you can tell this this was Uematsu's last full game soundtrack project, because he really goes crazy. it runs the gamut from somber piano themes, to relaxing acoustic guitar, to doom, to eerie ambient vocals, to a fucking boss theme that HAS to be a direct reference to Eternity, the boss theme from Blue Dragon... just without a decrepit-sounding Ian Gillian, charming as that song is. there's enough prog rock in this game to make me blush, but my favorite track has to be the one that just sounds like it came off of one of the 80s jazz fusion records i've spent years of my life listening to. Fantasian's soundtrack really feels like the perfect send off to his career, and i'll always cherish it. (i'd also be remiss to not mention the short story Uematsu wrote that is included in the game--that shit had me crying.) (on that note, the novel segments made me go "oh my god, it's just like Lost Odyssey!" and i haven't even played Lost Odyssey because that shit is still trapped in 360 jail. free him.) the characters are all great and each fill their own role in the story, which separates this game from something like FFVI where half the cast is just there for no reason. some of them have their arcs wrapped up better than others--Ez just forgives the moustache-twirlingly evil artisan guild guys who constantly plagiarized his work and landed him in jail because they apologized nicely once?--but i'd say he's the only weak link here. the characters all fit their individual tropes, sure, but pulling off tropey characters well is a perfectly fine accomplishment in itself. Tan is my favorite character because not only is he strapped with the best risk-reward DPS skills, he's also gap moe. him saying にゃんこ～げんきかー will live in my brain forever. the story is also really nice; i like how you start as a guy with amnesia and end up facing a dimensions-ending threat and kill god. it's simple on its face, and i'm always a sucker for that sort of story. i think Fantasian being the swan song of these developers adds to the meaning of its story, too: i can't read text about treasuring your connections with others and facing your collective and individual hardships together without imagining how that reflects the lives and careers of the crew at Mistwalker. going from those extremely low stakes (the first real dungeon is even a tiny forest!) to those extremely high stakes is just another way in which Fantasian feels like a proper swan song for Final Fantasy. that series died after XIII and all that's left is a shambolic husk that Square Enix trots out to burn money and labor. being raised off of Final Fantasy, playing Fantasian for the first time was an exercise in me going like, "oh my god! this is just like that thing but somehow better! how did they do it!" the second part of the game is like FFVI's World of Ruin; there's a weapon like the Chicken Knife from FFV; there's the aforementioned Not Sphere Grid, and the skeleton of the combat is much like FFX's; there's long-lost sister princesses like FFV; one of the bosses is like FFX's Chocobo Eater. i could go on, but listing all of the ways in which Fantasian is like Final Fantasy starts to feel a bit reductive after a while. this game can and does stand on its own feet as an incredible game, even if you aren't a sicko who's had Final Fantasy in your blood for as long as you can remember. it's easily my favorite RPG released since, uh, Demon's Souls in 2009. everyone at Square Enix is going to hell for not marketing this port. it's FINALLY been released from Apple Arcade jail and no one is playing it or talking about it. god help me. please play Fantasian. it's really, truly special.
January 4, 2025 at 3:57 PM