#See this is the problem with always drawing NPC with red eyes how am I supposed to differentiate Evil Grian lol

[sysig]

It was Taurtis’ episode so obviously I drew mostly Grian again

[roseyful]

Mars Red: Edge of the Nightmare - Review

Now, my Tumblr has been a bit quiet lately (been queuing a lot of things so then it wasn’t too quiet during my absence), but it has been for a good reason; last month I was approached [on my private twitter account] and asked if I would be able to playtest a game and write a review, and of course, being someone that enjoys games, especially those that follow an otome style, I had to say YES.

So its proud to say that after a while of playing the game, I finally get to write this review.

Now before I get into the game itself, I would like to take the moment to give appreciation to the team for being so helpful during my time of playtesting the game and before that, as not only would they let us know when there was an issue and the date had to be pushed back, they were so polite and helpful whenever I would run into a problem. That’s something you’d want to see in a gaming company and I’m so glad that my first experience with this company is one with positive results. I personally found no issues with the team themselves, and I do hope they keep this up after the release. Thank you favary for being so lovely and patient with me, and other beta testers.

Mars Red: Edge of The Nightmare was the game that they asked for me to play, however when I originally looked at their website, I couldn’t help but notice that the concept was originally one of a ‘Sound Theatre’, and while I couldn’t figure out what that was, I eventually was lead down a rabbit hole and ended up looking at the other things that Bun-O Fujisawa has worked in. Very interesting stuff, just like the game. However, it’s best to look at his other stuff in your own time.

Please note: I will be keeping this spoiler-free for the sake of letting people go in with no idea of what’s going on besides what I mention and on the website.

Story

The game is set in the early twentieth century in Japan, or better known as the Taisho, in which the website also says ‘[is] influenced by Romanticism’, in which vampires rule the night, as they could only feed off blood and those that stepped into the sun would surely die. Keen senses, incredible physical abilities, and yet they were still vulnerable. You see that very early on with the main character that we play as; Yutsufusa Yuki, a vampire whom became one against his will.

I will be honest, I did not like Yutsufusa when I first started playing, as I felt like he was a bit too willing to die, but that is something that you can overlook when you get further into the story. Yutsufusa is obviously one of the youngest in the group, due to the fact he wears the more ‘modern’ [at the time] clothing out of everyone, well, there is someone else who wears similar clothing but he’s human.

You control Yutsufusa throughout the game, influencing his voices and living his life through his eyes, him acting as the reader insert as you learn about the other characters and begin to grow a bond with them. While the story is a bit slow at first, it does start picking up around the middle-end of chapter 1 and the beginning of chapter 2 after you play the prologue, as you begin to assist “Code Zero” in their work to rid the world of vampires that wish to feast on humans..

Be mindful that there is an anime, however, Yutsufusa does not appear in it, as it focuses on the other main characters, so if you have watched the anime already be sure to remember that they’re either two separate timelines or different points in time. I do not want to confuse anyone with this.

The main cast is quite an interesting bunch, as it covers a wide range of personalities, and sometimes even time periods as you play through the game and unlock things; you might say you might learn a bit of history from it if you end up looking up some of the references I’ve found in the game. This is a great reflection on the idea of ‘immortality, and even has moments where said immortality leans into a few jokes (such as knowledge of birds).

If you’ve played games such as ‘Ikemen Revolution’, you may be familiar with the ticket system. Every day you’re allowed a certain amount of tickets to progress through the story, however, if you run out of tickets and you must read more, then you’re able to progress the story via using ‘amber’, the game’s currency that you can use for different functions. However, this is not needed, as every day your tickets will be replenished. I personally found myself not even needing to use my amber, as I would always wait for the next day. There are mini-stories that you can get if you finish a chapter within a certain amount of time, but I personally don’t find them to progress the story a lot after I read the first one I got. Then again I had other things to occupy my time while I wanted as well. If you wish to reread chapters, you get a bonus third option of currency; coins. Coins can be used to reread chapters in the place of amber or tickets, which means that you can grind out coins via the exploration option in order to see more options (looked at a bit later).

I personally found the story to be engaging, between the use of minigames (or investigations, covered a bit later), it broke up the reading with fun activities that progressed the story.

Is the game an Otome?

No! I was shocked as well when I saw the all-male cast since I was wondering if I was playing a boys love game, but in the end, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that this is actually a detective game. While it may carry the usual look of an otome, with the story and choices of how you speak influencing the endings of chapters, the game more feels like one of finding new friends and solving kick-ass investigations than finding romance. It’s refreshing.

This is especially true between the minigames in which helps influence the story that is all very unique in their own way and do not seem repetitive once you get into the flow of how they work.

Minigames

The minigames come forward in two forms; investigation, interrogation, and infer. Investigation sounds exactly how you’d expect, as you have to poke around and look at things, which you can review in a little notebook that sits in the top right of your screen in the case you need to review what you’ve looked at. When I was first launched into this section for the first time, I had a little trouble remembering exactly what I needed to look at (as I was given a set of things to tap), however, I do have to thank the team for thinking ahead and adding the option to be able to watch ads in order to see what you need to do. This was one of the two times I’d have to watch ads, as they don’t shove them in your face every few seconds like most mobile games do which is rather nice. Sometimes you gain information or items that you have to use later, so it’s a good idea to keep track of what you look at.

Interrogation acts as a question-based information gathering, in which you talk to NPCs in order to gather information to use in the investigation. Like Investigation, these points are put into your notebook for later.

Infer takes the first two investigation segments and combines the information, as you now get interrogated by one of the main characters, and you must respond back with the proper information in order to make sure that this segment is successful. You are able to read back on the notes from the other segments at this point by pressing the button with the book icon in the upper right corner, as this aids you in selecting the right answers. When I first came to this section, I did feel under pressure due to it, but it was interesting to see the negative answers from the character if I got it wrong.

Exploration is another part of the game, that while outside the story, there are parts that require a certain amount of story points in order to clear ‘point blocks’. This is where you get the coins from and frankly is good to use once you have finished using all your tickets for the day and want to use the rest of the time to grind coins. During the exploration, you set up 2 characters, a place, and a set [in real life] time of how long you want them to be out and about. Depending on the number of points earned, you may earn something called a ‘mummer’, which reveals more about the characters you chose to send out, and even get dialogue of the characters interactions (which can be pretty funny in itself) that shows the dynamic of the two characters- are they friends? Are things tense? You get to learn more by sending them out together.

Artstyle

As an artist, I was incredibly pleased with the art of the game, as the characters do not look the game, there are different body types and ages (from teen to elder), you never had to look at the same face twice for two characters. I will be honest, I do wish the characters were a bit more ‘animated’ with their expressions (such as body movement when they’re feeling certain emotions), however other than that, the sprites are magnificent.

The backgrounds are also really interesting to look at and even tell so much story before you even start investigating within the investigation sections. The design team also needs props, because while a few characters are wearing similar outfits, they’re all wearing them in different ways which shows their character and even the way they probably fight. Though I will say I am a bit biased towards Takeuchi, then again, I really enjoy fun and loud characters in general, and his hair is interesting in a sea of mostly black, purple, silver or blonde hair. Maybe will make a fanart of him in the future if I learn to draw his eyepiece. (on that note, please release the full sprites for us artists to reference, we’d love you eternally for it haha).

Oh no, it’s a-

Yes, its a bit of a gacha game, however, you do not need to actually play the gachas in order to progress through the game; it mostly just unlocks bits of story for those that want to have extra stories, or just want that extra dose of dopamine (haha, me). As someone who plays gacha games ever since they turned 13, I was glad that this game isn’t actually gacha centric, and thus is very free-to-play friendly due to this.

Who would I recommend this for and would I recommend it myself?

Personally, I think this is a game that suits the niche of those that enjoy a good mystery and even play those ‘find an item’ games, mixed in with those that enjoy reading otomes and history. Maybe even someone that enjoys theatre since there’s a character that does theatre. Would I personally recommend it? Yes, I would. The game is very interesting and engaging, the staff behind the game are so lovely.

Once more, here’s the game’s website link ❤️: https://marsred-game.net/en/

[ghostmartyr]

SnK 111 Thoughts

If this chapter doesn’t have forty pages of chibi Eren wandering through the woods asking where his nii-san is, what even is the point.

(The point is Drama.

Intrigue.

Fluid.)

Thanks, I hate it?

So yikes, we have a proper ballgame going and everything is awful leading into the ninth inning. It’s going to be extra innings with Paradis’ chief closer out of commission, up against their rival team. Truly one for the record books, people.

First thing is actually first, where the manga, in a fit of hysterics, gives me something I wanted: Numbers.

Over a hundred people have joined Eren’s side, deserting their posts. The suspicion is that they’ve done this out of the belief that the people with the power to rain down armageddon are maybe the safest shadows to hide under, and hey, with all the waffling their government has done about solving the problem of the whole world wanting them dead, why not?

For the larger groups, everything makes a simple amount of sense.

Eren has power, so people gather behind him.

Eren has power, so Paradis will yield to it for the sake of survival.

It’s a bit of a horrifying story, and one that I always take some joy in seeing. There comes a point where individuals have so much power where the only thing stopping them from changing the world however they see fit is their own boundaries.

Whatever Eren’s boundaries are, they’ve changed. He’s willing to kill children for the sake of his mission.

He is the most powerful card Paradis has, and without him, they have nothing.

Leaving them stuck doing whatever he wants them to.

It’s a similar tactic to the one he uses to drag the Survey Corps into his massacre; they need Eren, so they have no choice but to come support him in the choices he’s made as an individual. Everything else falls away in the face of the power Eren wields.

Yeah, the head of their government has been assassinated by his cult. Along with several other lives.

So?

Does that fundamentally change anything?

Does Paradis somehow need the Founding Titan less now that their command is facing disarray?

For a story so often pointing out that if you don’t fight, you can’t win, it’s pretty damn... something that the main character has all but removed the ability of a party he’s allied with to fight. They can’t resist him, and he knows it, and he’s exploiting it at his convenience.

Putting Zeke’s location on the negotiating table is cute, and a nice stall tactic in theory, but for all that Pixis says it’s not submission, Paradis is powerless.

If they don’t conduct rumbling experiments, they have no protection against the world.

They can’t conduct rumbling experiments unless they let the Yeager Bros come into contact.

If the Yeager Bros come into contact, they can do whatever the hell they want.

Which they have already been doing, so picture all of this, only more.

Pixis’ decision is really the only one he can make if he doesn’t want their people at each other’s throats. They can’t publicize how their one and only hope is willing to dismantle their government. They can’t publicize that they can’t trust their military to be acting in the interests that the government puts forth.

There’s a delicate balance here, with the balance being a complete lie because security has already toppled off and discovered that there’s no net below.

Their only prayer is someone swooping in and placing a trampoline down below before the crushing fall is completed, and there’s no guarantee of even that much happening.

If Zeke and Eren don’t want to help, no one can actually force them.

Zeke is one of two living humans in the world who can power the Founding Titan.

Eren currently has the Founding Titan.

They can’t kill Eren outside of a controlled environment, or else the Founding Titan will go who knows where. With Eren’s pile of abilities he’s nommed, fighting to subdue him will be next to impossible. With the added limitation of doing everything they can to avoid killing him?

Armin brings it up as a point of faith; if Eren has the Founding Titan, it shouldn’t matter what Zeke wants out of it.

Eren now has a cult who doesn’t blink twice at assassinating key government officials. Even if it doesn’t matter what Zeke wants, what Eren wants, or is at least willing to put up with, is heavily alarming.

“No, no, we’re not submitting. We’re negotiating.

What do you mean the only thing we have is something we’d have to hand over anyway to get what we want.”

Like.

Hell, man, talk the good game all you want to keep morale up, but you people and your entire society now rise and fall at the whim of a man who has put no effort into making himself look trustworthy.

So, you know.

Ganbatte.

Other special numbers include thirty soldiers + Levi standing in between Eren and Zeke once Eren finds Zeke, Hange, and three unnamed soldiers who are either about to be very dead, very traitor, or the coolest NPC badasses ever.

Meanwhile, Eren still has a hundred.

Just trailing around after him.

With bombs.

Considering Eren could kill most all of those people (except Levi and Hange) without help, I repeat the theme of this post that Paradis is so beyond screwed it has actually become laughable.

Another fun thing of note that only I care about is that even if Eren can’t get to Zeke, he might be able to get to Historia, and Nile appears to be in charge of her security.

The reason only I care about this is because Nile is in charge of her security, and Nile has been fed the story of Historia and NPC Farmer Guy being totes in love 5evr.

(NPC Farmer Guy has no name and no face. I declare him Red Shirt-san, and also reallllllly fucking dead. Especially if my crack theory of the carriage from last chapter rushing off to Historia was correct, meaning that Pieck, theoretically having tracked the carriages, is going to pay the Queen a visit.

Bye Nate.

(his name’s Nate your canon is invalid))

Briefly defending my descent into self-interest, Historia getting zero panels and barely any hearsay about her is driving me nuts for all sorts of reasons.

Two people (count them, two), in the entire world, are capable of drawing out the power of the Founding Titan. One of them is an untrustworthy dick. The other is Historia.

Historia, when last seen under extreme emotional duress, was of the opinion of, “fuck humanity titans did nothing wrong.”

As we can plainly see from her expression at the end of 107, there is nothing but blue skies and happiness going through her boundless considerations of humanity now, and she is most assuredly, definitely on their side as all of her friends ditch her in the middle of the woods and never visit or mention any concern for her except that one guy who has taken up murdering children, and he possibly did that in active defiance of concern for what problems it might cause her.

What could possibly go wrong.

There are about three people who hold the fate of Eldia in their hands, and we know what none of them are thinking. They also all have a much more casual relationship with murder than most of the rest of the cast.

What I’m trying to say is that Paradis your politics are boring because your livelihood hinges on three catastrophically emotionally damaged people, and all of the story’s energy is going towards keeping those people away from thought bubbles or general illumination.

If Historia, Eren, and Zeke decide that you guys die............ you die.

You possibly should have invested more in strategies that weren’t so entirely dependent on renegade children following orders.

Okay okay, enough pointing and laughing at the futility of government in shounen. Mikasa! How you liking your entire page of dialogue! Does it feel good? Does it make up for the gaping hole Eren being a nutcase is causing?

Of course it does!

I don’t know how I feel about Kiyomi, but I am glad that her relationship with Mikasa is so obvious in its self-interest. Mikasa isn’t being yanked around; she knows this person caring about her blood hasn’t translated to caring about her people.

Whatever Mikasa’s genes, Paradis is her home, and she considers herself as Eldian as anyone on it.

What’s interesting in that conversation is that Hizuru is still doing what it can to avoid being an ally of Paradis. They’re letting this one clan mess around, but unless results can be produced, the whole scheme is dead to them.

...

You know. Paradis had better start hoping that there’s still some massive secret to the Titans, because with the current knowledge available, they are just... so incredibly screwed on so many different levels.

I’m inclined to think that Kiyomi wanting Mikasa safe is one of the few shreds of honesty she has left. I’m an optimist. A child connected to the days of honor long gone... hey, it’s a romantic concept, even conniving foxes can have one last hurrah in them.

But also, Mikasa just doesn’t deserve people piling more lies on her.

A promise to protect someone calls to her heart. I’m sure Mikasa has thought those words to herself many times; whatever happens to Paradis, her priority has always been her family. Not a blood family, like Kiyomi holds on to, but one bound to her with ties of steel.

Only now her family is at odds.

Mikasa might care more about her family than anything else, but in practice, she’s a compassionate, responsible young woman. She can’t turn her back on the world just because her family has. She’s going to bleed herself dry trying to do the best for both of them.

That’s not a happy thought, because even if Mikasa, with all her strength and ability, fights for anyone in this conflict with all her heart, the concept of winning is a far off dream. Her supernatural gifts don’t make the world turn. Her gifts simply mean she might survive when everything around her explodes.

Yuck.

And also hey, Connie, I love you man, but you turn those angry eyes away from Mikasa pronto.

Then we’ve got the many trials of Nicolo.

Featuring Gabi and Falco.

...

I don’t wanna. I can skip this part.

Uggghgghghhgh.

Hell, this is a lot faster than I thought this disaster would come out, and it’s a lot grimmer than I really want and in general just ow.

Nicolo is a prisoner of war. He is allowed to cook. He finds light in cooking for people like Sasha. He’s Marleyan, and Eldians are devils, but being around them, his heart softens to them, and his role becomes something more complicated.

As a soldier, fighting the demons of Paradis is just what you do.

As a person, fighting people like Sasha, Jean, and Connie...

With a heavy heart, he can hand off laced wine to their superiors. He can continue to operate as a soldier fighting against Paradis. But the very thought of Connie and Jean being caught up in that sends him into a panic, and he falls back on racist rhetoric to cover it up.

Rhetoric his heart isn’t even in anymore, because more than killing, Nicolo finds himself in cooking. In bringing people happiness.

And Gabi killed the person who shows him that. The person who gave him solace from the hell of war.

It doesn’t matter that she’s a child, or a Warrior Candidate, or anything but the person who killed Sasha.

She cares about Falco’s life. That comes to stand as another condemnation of her. She knows what it is to care about someone? She’s valued enough that this boy is willing to jump in front of a blow meant for her?

Did she think the person she killed wasn’t?

It’s destructive and awful, and Gabi finally has a defense for herself that isn’t just brainwashed rage at the island. That girl? The one she shot? That’s the girl who shot someone she knew. Guards who watched over Warrior Candidates training, in charge of penning up Eldians, but they were still people Gabi saw a home in.

She can’t justify the loss of Sasha, but she can justify shooting back, especially at someone who just clubbed Falco in the head.

But she’s still just a brainwashed child.

Sasha’s father watches two people, profoundly touched by his daughter, ripping each other apart because they’re in pain. Sasha changes Nicolo for the better. Sasha and her path in life is what’s breaking this child.

A child is calling his daughter a devil. She’s been brought into this conflict and all she sees is the enemy, and the good there must be in fighting that enemy.

Gabi doesn’t even try to fight back when Sasha’s father holds up the knife.

She’s bleeding and in tears, and for one of the only times, she isn’t reacting with violence. She’s just a stunned little kid, wondering if the people who’ve fed and housed her on this island of evil are about to kill her. Like she killed the daughter they loved so much.

Of course the man who raised Sasha doesn’t lay a finger on her.

Of course the man who has to physically hold down his child to try to force her to stop eating so she won’t die of starvation later understands how hard the world is.

Horrific things have happened.

He isn’t going to bring one more into this world.

And Gabi... from the very start, she’s been the most passionate about becoming a Warrior. She’s going to follow in her cousin’s footsteps. She’ll commit war crimes, she’ll take on a death sentence, she’ll do whatever it takes. She’s a Warrior.

She’s a kid.

She doesn’t want these kind people to hate her.

Kaya reacts the same way Gabi has to everything so far. She charges in with the only weapon she can find, trying to kill the problem because the emotional strain of what’s actually going on is too big for her young heart to take.

Kaya, who really has been kind. Who’s the reason they’re here. Who’s been trying to get her and Falco home.

Kaya’s in tears, and Falco’s unconscious and bleeding.

All because of what Gabi’s done.

Nicolo sees the same thing.

That’s why he comes clean.

The world is such a cruel place.

They’ve got to spare the beauty where they find it.

I’m not going to touch that plot bomb, because the manga can do it for me in future chapters. Zeke having a bunch of government officials drink his spinal fluid is honestly on par with every other thing he’s done, so. One more point to the Paradis Screwed column.

So last word goes to Mikasa.

I mentioned in the chapter where Louise and Mikasa talked that Louise had seen Mikasa’s strength impact her life, but completely missed the kindness behind that strength. Mikasa is terrifying as a soldier. She’s cold and relentless.

As a person, she will ask the child who killed her friends to see her wounds, and hold her close to keep another child from hurting her.

Mikasa is kind.

Gabi has met so many good people on this island, and all of them are in tears.

It’s funny and sad that Mikasa and Armin take her into the back room to calm down. For all their lives practically, they’ve been looking after a reckless wild child who gets into fights they have to finish for him.

Gabi is as driven and passionate and full of anguish as Eren as a child, and now she’s with two of the people who know that.

Armin and Mikasa might not know how to help Eren, but they can help this little girl.

And Mikasa can keep another little girl from knowing what it’s like to knife someone in the back because they killed someone you love.

Welcome to Emotions.

Where everything is absolutely awful except maybe the people feeling them.

[destiny-smasher]

ALL RIGHT. I finally finished the story of Red Dead Redemption 2. Having not played the original (but knowing an outline of its story), I’m not as pressed to rush through the epilogue, though I do plan to play through that, as well. As further context, I played as a mostly Honorable Arthur Morgan, getting his Honor level high, about 2/3 up for most of my playthrough, and maxed out by the end. RDR2 is a fascinating game, but also one with a fair share of major problems. It is one of the most visually stunning, atmospheric games I’ve ever played. Goddamn impressive lighting, ambience, environments. It has some interesting characters, a lot of goofy, energetic cliches, and one of the most well realized protagonists in a game I have played. Do you know how difficult it is in this day and age to make a video game with a lot of killing have a grizzled old white man as the lead and still manage to make that narrative interesting? It is hard. I am endeared to Arthur Morgan. I became invested. I felt rewarded with the way his story culminated, though the actual final moments were perhaps anticlimactic. That’s actually fine. Arthur Morgan is tired. So very, very tired. I really liked this aspect of his character, and seeing him accept his own demons and try to do what good he could despite the circumstances. A lot of the cut-scenes are well edited, well written, detailed in their animation and well-acted. There’s a decent amount of variety to the setups of activities the player can engage in with missions. The controls are kind of a mess, though.

When the game presents an NPC in danger and I want to help them but accidentally draw a gun on them because the button for focusing on a person is also the same as drawing your gun and so I just saved this NPC’s life but got NEGATIVE reputation because I inadvertently made them scared, that’s kiiiiinda bullshit, and basically never has happened to me in any other open world game like it does here. On the flipside, the world is so detailed and fully realized. Sauntering into a shop, grabbing a catalogue, and purchasing groceries; doing CHORES at your camp, going hunting, all of these kinds of things are slow paced in the best of ways. But then shooting starts -- and it ALWAYS starts -- and you are reminded of how this is a AAA video game and ya just CAN’T enjoy a beautifully rendered snapshot of an earlier time in human history, ya HAVE TO MURDER PEOPLE DAMNIT. There is one MAJOR glaring issue with this game in my eyes, and that is how the story is at odds with itself. The story is about REDEMPTION (unless you play it like a straight criminal which is weird because the narrative clearly doesn’t want you to? And doesn’t seem to change THAT much either way?), and yet every fucking mission it felt like devolved into a very boring, poorly controlled shooting gallery. It’s not even like the shooting is fun or engaging or creative. It’s boring, and handles poorly. That’s WHY deadshot exists -- to compensate for the game’s poor handling. But even worse is the fact that this is ALWAYS ALWAYS the way the game tries to hold your attention, as if the execs decided players just COULDN’T HANDLE going more than 20 minutes without fucking murdering ten people because reasons. It’s incredibly frustrating, especially as the game starts getting into moral debates. No one here has a moral high ground because all of them are murderers so you REALLY start losing me when you try to pretend like NPCs we have to shoot are any worse than us, in a story that FORCES US to murder countless people, often for no real good reason, to the point that it deliberately has NPCs get all murdery on the player just to force them into self-defensive killing.

Anyway. Beautiful game, some good story if it drags on a bit -- it really wants you to soak things in and I love that -- but the controls are too fiddly, doing basic shit is too difficult, and there is wayyyy too much bland shooting galleries shoe-horned in just to make things feel “exciting” when they just make things not only boring, but go against the game’s narrative high points.

Arthur Morgan is great, though, a complicated, well written and acted character unlike most in gaming.

[kiederen]

Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE review

I said I would give my impressions on #FE and I neglected to do so till now, but better late than never.

I’ll be talking about:

Story

Setting/Theme

Characters

Gameplay

1. Story

The story is nothing special - I enjoyed it, but it's a fairly typical jrpg "power of friendship and bonds" deal that is only made unique in any capacity by the idol culture that frames it. It's not bad, but it's not groundbreaking either. I wish the story were a bit longer to give more of a build up into the final confrontation. The earlier stages slowly start to set things up but even just one more dedicated chapter to ease into the final arc would have probably made the ending feel less rushed. That and I just enjoyed playing it overall and would liked more content.

The distinct chapters format to the flow may have been meant to simulate FE chapters while still also representing how persona stories often have noticeable breaks between dungeon arcs. In TMS though, it felt a bit more artificial, not damningly so, but I think the plot momentum was a bit worse for it. 

The set up for each chapter break also revolves around Itsuki himself improving as an entertainer, even though he doesn’t know what direction he wants to focus on, and while it’s most emphasized early on, this aspect of Itsuki’s development himself feels almost abandoned or ignored through the mid and late game until the very end. The solution does make some sense, but some of the details that enable it to happen are a bit questionably contrived, and like the overall story, it felt a bit rushed in the final hour, based on what I remember.

Otherwise, the story did a good job of setting itself up, providing the characters with adequate motivation and means to seek the goals they set and each dungeon gave reasonable purpose for the main characters to tackle it.

The final chapter seemed to be trying to make up for the lack of build up by twisting and turning a bit more than usual, but most of its attempted twists were fairly standard fair for trying to draw out suspense and unfortunately were somewhat predictable for it. I was a little surprised at the host for the big bad, but mostly because I hadn’t been paying close enough attention so that was on me.

2. Setting/Theme

The Tokyo idol scene setting is the most interesting aspect of the story and while I can see it being polarizing, I found it novel myself. Mechanically, it does a good job of unifying the dungeons under a common theme of "things idols do" - such as posing for photo shoots or acting on TV.

Beyond dungeon design, the idol theme also naturally informed character designs and the multitude of costumes that appear throughout.

You can even see this thematic flair in the way that spell casting involves a character signing their autograph as a glyph!

If there’s one oddity that stands out to me about the aesthetics of the game, it’s that the monster designs seem to be unable to decide whether they should be FE inspired or SMT inspired or neither, but even in the latter case most don’t seem to fit in with the idol theme in any capacity.

Even when enemies are FE inspired, they seem to have gone through a similar (if not more extreme) filter that the Mirage characters went through - becoming dramatically stylized and the only real purpose I can conceive for it is to make enemy classes that were definitely human in FE appear non-human here. For instance, the middle and right monsters above are myrmidon class enemies - unpromoted swordmasters from the FE universe.

Not to mention: Why do their out-of-combat sprites look like Organization XIII members!?

3. Characters

Like the story, the characters are good if nothing particularly revolutionary. Most seem built around one or two tropes but then are fleshed out beyond that which is fine. You learn more about them as you do their individual side quests (social links) and these do a good job of giving the feeling of evolving your bond with that character. The pacing of the side stories is mostly okay, though the gameplay reward for those that are plot locked to be very late doesn't always feel equal to how long you had to wait to do them. There's a bit of persona syndrome wherein all the chars get plenty of opportunities to interact with the MC, but would benefit from more time interacting with each other as well.

I liked all the characters in the end. There's a good variety between both the girls and boys, though because of join times some chars got more focused screen time than others. Again, I think a longer late game with more story side quests (instead of fetch quests) would have helped balance things out. 

If I had to be as base as to rank the girls in terms of waifu ratings: 1. Eleonora 2. Tsubasa 3. Kiria 4. Maiko 5. Mamori = Tiki Though it's worth noting that top four are all really close, and each slot only wins out over their competition by a small margin. I don’t dislike Mamori or Tiki, I just am not into the little sister appeal.

I suppose Barry Goodman is worth mentioning as well. Barry is a foreigner who settled in Japan and behaviorally embodies the most cringe-worthy aspects of otaku culture. He’s heavy-set, roughly groomed, and somewhat aggressive/abrasive about his passions. I’m not one to judge him for the subject of his passions, but the way he interacts with them would make me uncomfortable around him had he been a real person. Ultimately he is a good person at heart, but his poor people skills are unlikely to endear him to anyone on first impressions, and the fact that he doesn’t care only exacerbates his problems.

Finally, and predictably most disappointingly, the FE chars (heroes and villains) are barely developed and could be replaced with persona or persona like motifs without changing the overall plot. The FE aspect is little more than a coat of paint that gives secondary theme to the invading 'otherworld,' and it's a real shame and waste of potential.

Aside from the Mirage characters and Tiki themselves, there are however a few unmarked references that are at least self aware enough to be welcome Easter eggs for fire emblem fans:

Anna is your convenience store shopkeeper, and there’s even a ‘shadow anna’ who will sell you more dubious dungeon consumables that a normal convenience store wouldn’t stock.

Ilyana works at the cafe, keeping close to her beloved food.

Aimee runs the jewelry store as she was the item store merchant in FE9 and 10

And Cath runs the costume shop. She’s a thief in FE6 with a distinct affinity for money, not unlike Anna, though not as extreme either. Admittedly, it’s been a while since I’ve read over her supports though.

I saw an npc employee at one of the random background shops in Shibuya central street that could also be Brady from FE Awakening, but the camera never got close enough to see him clearly enough to make a positive ID.

Finally, I found it amusing that all the playable chars' names are class puns/references 

蒼井樹 = Aoi Itsuki > Aoi means blue in reference to FE lords typically having blue hair

織部つばさ = Oribe Tsubasa > Tsubasa in reference to her peg knight class

赤城斗馬 = Akagi Touma >  赤 (Aka) gives us “red” while  馬(uma) is “horse.” Red cavalier (partnered with a green cavalier) is a reoccurring archetype in FE. The Red cav tends to be the hot-headed one.

I can break down the others if desired, but these will do for examples.

4. Gameplay

Going to break this into a few parts:

General

Combat

Dungeons

1. General

The real reason this game is compared to Persona; gameplay mirrors a lot of persona's elements and it's almost easier to describe how it deviates from the Persona format than spend time detailing how they're the same. That said, if you like the persona formula (as I do), you'd probably enjoy TMS's gameplay flow as well.

While the lack of daily life and day limits for dungeons removes a lot of the tension of time management for them, I think it's fine since a lot of persona players rush dungeons in 1-2 days anyway and in TMS, once the dungeon is done, you don't have to worry about doing busy work to tick off the days until the plot is allowed to move forward again. The lack of social stats is an element of depth removed, but without a time cost element to activities, it makes sense and is probably a good thing for it to be absent from TMS (even if story wise it could have actually be viable as Aoi and the others grow their skills as performers).

Using the WiiU game pad as a smartphone screen to facilitate off-screen character interactions as well as display more detailed enemy information was clever if perhaps unnecessary (as persona 5 showed). Having the only map on the game pad actually made it a little disorienting to reference for me since my eyes had to leave my tv entirely, leading to me either holding my game pad up or bobbing my head up and down to compare my map with my surroundings. On the DS, the two screens are at least close by. I’d like to say there may have been a better use for the game pad, I’m not thinking of anything off the top of my head, so it may have been wise to minimize its use as a gimmick anyway.

This is already in your phone history when you start the game, but it’s still probably my favorite moment from the text message logs:

#relatable.

Replacing persona fusion is a more straightforward crafting system that is the source for your weapons and passive skills, and in turn, much like Tales of Vesperia, your weapons are the source of your skills, both active and passive. The system sounds more grindy than it is in practice though. Simply advancing through the dungeons and fighting 70-80% of the monsters you encounter naturally will provide you with enough materials to forge most weapons as they become available. In fact there were a number of times when I ran out of new weapons to forge and had to push on with already mastered weapons equipped. I liked that bosses and some savage encounters would drop mats of a higher tier than what was readily available from current monsters, and you had to spend them wisely before advancing the plot to the point where those mats became common. It let you preview the next tier of weapons and abilities for select characters but who you gave those weapons to was never overly stressful since you could get the other weapons you passed on later anyway.

Rare monsters drop unique mats that can make weapons that give unusual or otherwise off-type skills to characters and it makes catching rare monsters that flee rather than engage the player rewarding. IIRC, I encountered fewer than ten rare monsters in my entire play through though, so I did not feel it worth the time to actively hunt them unless there was some trick to make them appear more reliably (and catching them was also a bit dependent on the surroundings). Like treasure monsters in P5, they usually had some kind of gimmick where they were only weak to one thing if they had any weakness and the latter ones also came with dodge [weakness] passive and had a chance of just up and running from battle.

2. Combat

The one-more mechanic is replaced by "Sessions" which are not unlike self contained one-more combos anyway. The tag in attacking animations were pretty fun and though late game sessions can get quite long, there’s no way to speed up or skip session animations, possibly in part because of the existence of duo arts which use the session animations as a timer. They could have prohibited skipping prior to deciding on a duo art and then allow skipping or speed up after, though. Long session animations didn’t bother me, personally though, as session attack animations were varied and interesting enough that I never got tired of even the early basic ones (most of which were replaced by late game).

Openly displayed turn order, plus some late game skills that can actually influence turn order were both welcome features as well. 

Beyond sessions, specials, duo arts, and ad-lib performances were great at providing extra variety and changing the pace of what might otherwise be rote combat. While duo arts and ad-lib performances were rng bonuses that you mostly just take whatever you can get and be grateful, specials were more deliberate, needing a resource that builds slowly at first. Later on, with longer sessions and meter boosting passives, the sp gauge builds up much faster, but even then specials usually should be selected carefully, especially within boss battles where recovering lost sp is a bit trickier. 

That said, special skills were not created equal. Even though buffs and debuffs are powerful, some of the later buffing and debuffing specials came late, at a point where I already had normal skills that could buff or debuff at almost if not the same potency without spending SP. Similarly, as my repertoire of skills grew, my ability to hit weaknesses improved and using specials to break through resistances became less necessary, even as monsters began appearing with more resistances. 

Finally, Itsuki’s second special - “Strike A Pose,” was absurdly good and only got better as my session combos grew longer late game. The ability to give everyone twice the actions in a turn opens up so many other combos that often times, there was little reason to use offensive specials in favor of either two individual sessions or a concentrate/charge boosted session. 

Inversely, I found myself using healing specials a lot less, and perhaps it was because I used Tsubasa a lot less late game - I made Chrom a great lord which gave Itsuki healing and support which was kinda Tsubasa’s niche previously, so with Touma able to out damage Tsubasa and Elly covering flying enemies, Tsubasa just wasn’t out in combat all that often, which meant Mamori was the only one with healing specials (which were helpful on occasion) but in the end using Strike A Pose allowed me to get normal heals out in extra abundance while still enabling attackers to make a play to help clear troublesome enemies.

The FE weapon triangle’s representation in strengths and weaknesses among weapon types (not extending to magic though) gave a welcome way to predict weaknesses for enemies I had not encountered yet. One of the frustrating things about persona had always been that weakness/strength attributes for new monsters were difficult to predict and late game could cause you to walk into a bad situation that was never really your fault. Not only did the weapon triangle help mitigate some of the arbitrary mystery, but weaknesses were frequently consistent across similar enemy types at different levels even outside of the sword/lance/axe trinity. For example mage type enemies were, with few exceptions, all weak to swords and fire. Skills that deal effective damage (i.e. horseslayer/armorslayer) were also a great addition that gave characters tools to start session combos on enemies that they might otherwise be powerless against. The player also gets other ways to work around pesky resistances, features that are both welcome and necessary because...

If I have one glaring critic of the battle system it’s that Itsuki, like persona protags is mandatory. However, unlike persona protags, Itsuki has static combat tools and extremely limited ability to influence his own strength and weakness attributes. He’s always weak to fire and lances and since you can’t remove him from the front line, you always have someone in combat weak to those elements. Fortunately this is less deal breaking for the fact that Itsuki dying in combat doesn’t immediately game over (hallelujah!). In addition, later in the game most chars get passive skills that greatly increase their avoid against elements they’re weak to, Itsuki included. Still, being able to remove Itsuki from the front line would greatly increase your party diversity and flexibility. For a while after recruiting a second sword character, I had difficulty justifying putting him in the active party because Itsuki already filled the sword role. Eventually, I promoted Itsuki to a more support role and let the other char handle offensive sword plays. 

One more minor complaint I have is the inability to swap out fallen allies. Having only three party members means that even one of them dying can be crippling, especially later on and on harder difficulties. I’ve wasted turns reviving downed allies and trying to heal back only for enemies to just repeat what killed someone in the first place and put me exactly where I was last turn with less healing items or sometimes in an even worse situation. While the boss dichotomy of easy/impossible with little in between that some persona bosses suffer from is present here, the existence of specials, ad-lib performances and duo performances that heal or revive greatly alleviate some of the comeback struggle that has a tendency to snowball in this combat system. As the only active non-rng option, specials in particular are important to the system. The severity of boss gimmicks isn’t quite as punishing in TMS compared to persona, but TMS’s smaller party size, can still cause a bad situation to cascade into unsalvageable territory.

3. Dungeons

The dungeon design of TMS is interesting in that it departs from persona 3/4′s formula of randomly generated floors in favor of deliberately organized floor plans with usually only one correct path to the end. The linearity is sometimes broken up by treasures that you’ll have to backtrack for, but aside from that, there’s little mandatory backtracking within a dungeon. Dungeons stick around even after you clear them, allowing side stories to ask you to venture back over familiar ground for one task or another.

That said, the linear nature isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In TMS’s case, it allows the developers to give the player a learning curve for the dungeon’s mechanics and then challenge how well the player understood the earlier lessons, because the devs can guarantee that the player experienced the earlier sections before the later ones. It may sound obvious on paper, but it means that the developers can have a better awareness of the player’s competency at any given point in any dungeon, which is something that can’t be tracked when the player can go multiple routes at any given time. But I digress.

Another mechanical difference of note is how the player, Itsuki interacts with enemies pre-battle. In persona 3 and later, you could swing your weapon to hit an enemy in the field and that would start combat (at an advantage if they didn’t notice you), but in TMS, striking an opponent on the field knocks them back and stuns them, giving you the choice to then get closer and touch them to begin combat at an advantage or to avoid combat entirely. I like this greater degree of choice and it fits within the philosophy that TMS dungeons are made to be less stressful - less about meticulous resource management - than persona games. There’s still an incentive to engage in combat: you need to keep up a certain amount of level growth just to have the raw stats to beat bosses, but if you’re low on health and/or healing items or just plain short on available play time and you think or know there’s a checkpoint up ahead so you just want to make a push to reach it, you aren’t forced into battles you don’t want to engage in... with the exception of “Savage Encounters,” which are challenge monsters that seem to just exist to screw with you anyway. I think there was only one area prior to the last or second to last dungeons that had savage enemies I could actually beat albeit with great effort.

Playing TMS after Persona 5, it was also apparent that TMS’s idolaspheres were prototype palaces, from the set floor layouts and linear progression to the overarching themes of the dungeon informing its aesthetic and unique mechanics. In fact there are a number of things that TMS pinoeered for Atlus that then went on to feature in P5. You can read about some others here.

Puzzles were almost entirely navigation in nature - that is, how to use the dungeon mechanics and infrastructure to get from your start to your goal. It may be because it’s been a little over a month now, but none particularly stand out in my memory as being exceptionally good, while one or two I remember for being somewhat arduous or tiring. I’m still of the opinion that areas that the player is trying to solve puzzles in should have lower if not 0 encounter rate with random enemies, as battles, especially turn based ones that don’t tend to resolve in a single turn, can disrupt problem solving trains of thought.

Overall the dungeons are good though, and that’s important as they’re the meat of the gameplay. They are generally well paced with plenty to do and some minor stuff to find on your way to your target goal. Each dungeon’s unique mechanics fit with the dungeon theme and aside from a few exceptions the enemies are fairly distributed.

5. Conclusion

It has its flaws but I think, in the end, Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE gets more right than it gets wrong. Even though the story was standard fair for this genre, I thoroughly enjoyed it and wished it had more content to its core for me to experience. I know there’s dlc, but the nature of dlc means that it’s nothing integral to the story and I’m not sure it would scratch the itch the way I want.

The setting is unique and the game fully embraces the themes it sets up and the themes in turn inform and affect almost every aspect of the game, giving it a unified appeal.

The combat is arguably more interesting than persona. It takes the same core formula of targeting weak points for massive damage but allows players more tools and freedom to circumvent bad matchups, make carefully planned strategic plays, or simply style on enemies with flashy satisfying attacks.

[2krisp]

Writathon 2018 Update 1

In the span of about two hours -- with random distracted outbursts here and there -- I wrote 1345 words of Hard Mode. My original goal had been 1k words for that particular WIPs, so yay!

Hard Mode is about a group of gamers who are stuck in a role-playing, simulation game and must learn to work together to survive. That sounds a little basic, and there’s probably been stories like that before, but I’m having fun with these characters!

If anyone’s interested, I’ll stick the sample that I’ve written today under the cut. I hope everyone else is doing well with their writathons!

"Anyone else see the castle coming into view on the horizon?" Wyatt asked, the alchemist nearly skipping ahead of the rest on the path.

The forest around them wavered out as they moved forward, their path going from crude, dirt roads into cobblestones dusted with other players' footprints. Landon's graphics card did its magic, the castle blinking into view with its stone towers and colorful banners waving in the game's wind. With the castle came the town wall, the stones protecting the citizens from the monsters that plagued the land at night.

With the daylight, the drawbridge was down, allowing NPCs and players alike to come and go as they please. More and more other players of the game were crowding into the castle town, no doubt eager to hear the new plotline.

"We'll have some good competition, it seems," Raine said from beside Landon. Her gaze was sweeping over the crowds, one of her hands placed on the dagger at her belt.

"No one's experience any lag?" Elijah asked. "With this many folks around, this'll be a good indication to how we'll all fare in any dungeons or temples we come across."

"Not lag, really," Noah said. He was squinting at the castle. "Uh, but is the castle supposed to be blinking?"

"No," Landon said, his stomach twisting. How would their group be able to complete the task if one of their teammates couldn't properly see the graphics?

"Dammit," Noah muttered. He sighed and asked sheepishly, "Sorry, but do y'all mind if I log out real quick? Just gotta check my graphics setting."

"No problem," Raine said, setting against one of the trees at the edge of the path.

"Wait a sec. Do we want to reach the castle town first?" Landon asked. "It'd be safer for your avatar in there if you're logging out."

"We're all right here," Wyatt said with a shrug. "We'll make sure nothing happens to his avatar while he's away from the keyboard."

"Besides, I assume we'll get caught up in a cut scene for the new plot once we make it far enough into the town," Elijah said. "Noah won't be able to log out in the middle of a cut scene."

"Good points," Landon conceded. Noah gave him a brief smile before his avatar grayed out with the letters AFK resting above his head. After a moment, his avatar disappeared completely and Landon fidgeted until Noah wavered back into view about five minutes later.

"There we go," Noah said, staring at the castle. "Much better. Onward!"

The group clamored down the path and joined the crowds. Elijah took the lead, his avatar being tall enough to meander through the crowds to head toward the castle. It was from the king of the realm that the players would receive the new plotline, the new goal of Steel and Sorcery. Raine gestured for Noah to go right behind Elijah, considering Noah was the smallest of the group, and amid the jostling of the crowd, Raine ended up a step behind Landon. Landon presumed Wyatt was bringing up the rear.

His presumption was shattered when Raine tapped his shoulder and called out to the other two, "Wait… We lost Wyatt."

Elijah glanced at them over his shoulder before tugging on Noah's arm and leading the rest of them out of the crowd toward one of the castle town's alleyways. "Thought it'd be you who would get lost," Elijah said casually to Noah.

Noah's ears turned red. "What? Why?"

"You're the smallest, that's all," Raine said, her gaze directed at the crowd as if they could spot their lanky fifth member. "Shouldn't be surprised with what I've learned about Wyatt's attention span these past few sessions, though."

"He probably found some market stalls and is spending our gold," Landon said, mentally berating himself for not taking up the rear. He should have been in the back keeping an eye on everyone.

"We have gold?" Noah asked.

Elijah chuckled. "Not much," he said. "Wyatt's probably putting us in the red."

"I'll go find him," Raine volunteered. "We can either meet you guys here or at the castle."

Landon was fine with meeting Raine and Wyatt at the castle, but he said, "We'll wait here. Don't think we can get the mission without the whole team."

"Alright," Raine said. "Be back soon."

She disappeared into the crowd, moving faster than Landon believed possible. Then again, he never tested out the rogue class. He quite liked the swords of the knight class, figuring the balance between offense and defense would suit him better than having a higher speed.

"Are all these players here for the same mission as us?" Noah asked, his eyes transfixed on the other avatars passing them by.

"Maybe," Elijah said lightly. "A new plotline always draws players in. Of course, it also depends on the teams' skill levels. I have my user settings so I can only see other players around the same skill level as us. Helps with lag and loading the graphics."

"Wait, how do you do that?" Noah asked. Elijah helped Noah bring up his user interface and walked him through the graphics options. Once they were done with the little tutorial, Noah beamed. "Okay, that's so much better! There's still a lot of people here, but at least I can see across the road now, haha!"

"How are you at a high enough level to join this mission," Landon asked, "when it sounds like you haven't really explored the basics of the game, like the user interface? I mean no offense," Landon added quickly when Noah's ears tinted red again. "Exploring all those options is just usually one of the first things I do whenever getting a new game, so it's a little odd to hear someone else… not."

Noah shrugged and tugged at the hem of his warrior armor. "I kind of just dive in, usually," he said. "I tend to figure out stuff as I go, but little options like the user settings I tend to forget about because I'm busy playing the game. I don't really think of that stuff until someone else mentions it or teaches me."

"Other people you play with haven't mentioned things like that?" Landon asked.

"I usually play by myself," Noah said. "So… no."

"Well, you'll learn by being with us," Elijah said. "Just stand next to Wyatt, wherever he is, and he'll babble enough to probably teach you how to code a game yourself."

"What about me? What do you need me to babble about?" Wyatt appeared at the edge of the alleyway, Raine right behind him with a shake of her head and a small smile on her face.

Wyatt didn't wait for anyone to answer, for he suddenly produced a bottle of thick, bubbling orange liquid from his user interface. "I'll babble about this!" he said. "I got this from an NPC vendor over by the entrance. He says it amplifies our magic power by five. I think we'll each get at least a small boost if we each take a sip—"

"I am not drinking that," Elijah said, his nose scrunched up. "That stuff looks like my first attempt at cooking tomato soup."

Wyatt raised an eyebrow as he stared from Elijah to the bottle. "Dude, tomato soup is red—"

"Why don't we talk about this later," Landon said, "and get going to the castle? I'll take up the rear this time."

"Sounds good to me," Raine said, gesturing for Elijah to take the lead once more. "I can trust your attention span."

Noah fell in step behind Elijah and Raine motioned for Wyatt to go ahead of her. Wyatt instead grinned and looped his arm with hers. "Since, you know, you can't trust my attention span," he said.

She rolled her eyes but opted to stay connect to Wyatt as they caught up with Elijah and Noah. Landon followed a step behind, marveling at the amused smiles on his teammates' faces. Was he the only one willing to take this seriously?

[shinytalent903-blog]

The Introduction of Addison West.

My DM invites me into the party, gives me a brief rundown of the world and such, and I come up with a character. I have a great love of writing, even if I am not that great at it, so I wrote a brief introduction to send to me DM.

They really enjoyed it, and they even used the NPC that I introduced as a main NPC in our campaign. I hope that someone else reads it and likes it too.

*****

Target: Addison Eleanor West.

Payment: 500,000 credits upon proof of completion.

*********************************************

Addison West loves The Luxe. This multi-level club in the silver district is wall to wall bodies, no matter the night, their VIP area is always open to her, and possibly the best of all she went to school with Alexis (DJ LX Sm00th) and he constantly kept her favourite tracks in reserve.

Tonight with a week until the Centennial Celebration the place is quiet. Addison can normally lounge in VIP and not see the bar for the crush of people, now everyone passing by can make eye contact and smile hopefully.

Addison taps violet nails on a glass filled with a lavender drink, a subtle signal to Matteo that she would love another.

Matteo gives her a look before puffing out his barrel chest and heading to the bar. Matteo is an old school body guard, been with her family since before she was born, and he could still snap a guy in half for looking at her the wrong way. Still sometimes Addison forgets that there are streaks of silver in his well oiled black hair.

Matteo likes to remind Addison that he is not an errand boy, that the West Corporation hires interns to fetch and carry for her. Addison always fires back with a reminder that an intern won't take a bullet for her.

The VIP area is empty save for her and while normally this is the time of the evening that Addison would start inviting people over, tonight something feels different. When Matteo brings her a fresh drink she thanks him with a smile, despite her mother's belief that Addison disrespects the West Family staff Addison has great respect for Matteo.

Like right now, Alexis is taking a break between sets and he is bee lining toward her. Matteo knows without her having to say a word to stand in front of the entrance and stare Alexei down like the immovable brick wall he is.

“Addi, love, call off your dog and let me come say hello?”

“Don't call me that. Matteo answers to mother, he is deaf to me. Isn't that right Matteo?”

Matteo grunts and continues his dead stare.

“Fine, fine, but you owe me a date Miss West.”

Matteo snorts, and Addison gives her camera ready smile. “IM me the details Lex.” she says before blowing him a kiss.

Soothed Alexis leaves and misses Addison rolling her eyes at her bodyguard as Matteo gives her the signal. The reason that Luxe holds her interest is that there is an almost nightly card game and finally, finally a seat was free at the table.

*

Lucien Spires took the job because Mallory West didn't give him room to say no. Lucien had no interest in killing some girl, but the amount of zeroes on that cheque were very convincing.

Taking a passing look in the glass as he exits the room he catches sight of the charcoal suit, the red tie, and the polish on his shoes and smirks. Green eyes stare back at him.

If Mrs West really wants to plan a funeral so close to the Centennial that's not his problem.

The Luxe has barely opened it's doors and Lucien has a seat at the table, he has to wait for the target to arrive, and then gain her seat at the table. The hosts like to keep her waiting, and for some reason the target doesn't seem to mind.

When the asset finally breezes in, smile fixed in place, she jokes about a table full of new faces to take credits from. It falls flat, and yet the target just fixes a feline smile to her darkened purple lips and picks up her hand.

*****

"She recently fixated on the colour purple. She will do this, you understand? Chase a particular interest only to give it up once it's been bled dry. I believe it has to do with her father's penchant for spoiling her."

"Ma'am, I don't know why that's relevant."

"Hmm?" Mallory West raises a perfect eyebrow at Lucien "Well I hope you would use the information provided to accurately identify your target."

"Ma'am, no offence, but everyone on Starbright knows your daughter, even with her recent hairstyle choice."

Of course only the impossibly rich could be this impossibly ignorant. Addison’s face had been all over the feeds when she dyed her blonde tresses a soft lavender, and shaved one side of her head.

Mallory West flinches, her children were clearly crafted in her image, and Addison is the one that constantly shifts and changes to not reflect her mother, but herself.

*

Addison was three hundred up overall, but this hand was not her hand. Worse still Matteo kept pacing in her peripheral vision throwing off her concentration. When she finally folds with a curse, tossing her cards on the table there's a moment when Addison doesn't understand why her cards hitting the table sounded like a gunshot.

The other woman at the table doesn't pause, she draws a las pistol from the small of her back and fires at the set of jowls that originally fired at Matteo.

"She's my contract, best back off old man."

Addison has grown up around guns. Matteo insisted on teaching her how to shoot, and Addison is awful at it but she understands gun fire, is familiar enough not to panic.

In an instant the table is on it's side and Addison is crouched on the sticky floor of a back room gambling den and wonder how in the constellations she got here.

*****

Well that's an interesting development. Lucien had been planning on making a move, just not something quite so bold.

The older gent at the table, he'd called himself Henry, had taken the guard out first. Smart, Matteo Delano was old school, and protective of his charge. He was also a legend in the underground boxing league, if you followed that sort of thing.

The woman (she didn't give a name so Lucien had been calling her Blondie) at the table had drawn Henry's attention, she had a laz pistol and knives for days. Good. Let them fight this out. Lucien would focus on- shit! Where did she go?

The burning sensation in his shoulder indicated that Blondie took exception to him trying to evac.

*****

Addison knows The Luxe's layout better than she knows the layout of her parent's penthouse. There is a service corridor, it leads to a set of stairs, and those stairs get you to an observation deck on the top level of the club.

Right now that's what Addison is focused on, get to the deck, be seen, and draw attention to herself.

There was a reason that those... what do you call someone trying to kill you? Criminals? Hitmen?

Assassins?

'Snap out of it West.' She gives herself a shake and starts pulling off her wine coloured heels in case she needs to run.

As she does Addison whispers "Call A."

There is a ringing in her ear “You've reached the messaging service of Armstrong West, if this is time sensitive please leave a message after the tone. Thank you.”

“A, dammit. If you're screening my calls I'm going to kill you.

********

Lucien chuckles, the first call of the night that Addison makes and it's a hurried call to her brother.

He wonders why she didn't call a security team, or even her father, odd that she would instead phone her brother.

“Listen bro, there's trouble. Matteo got shot, I'm on my way to you. I just gotta get out of here first.

I'm in the back corridor. A, please be careful. Stay put!”

Addison has no idea that this message isn't reaching her brother. Lucien rerouted all her calls to his own private line.

Lucien snakes his way out of the room, stepping over Blondie's unconscious form, leaving Harry bleeding out on the floor. There's a growing respect for this mark. Lucien looses his tie, and messes up his hair.

Hopefully he can sell this.

*****

Addison whips around glaring down the corridor, one shoe off and stumbling to wrench off the second. “Stay away from me.”

“Wait, please, what the hell,” and to really sell it Lucien winces with the pain in his shoulder. “what happened in there?”

Addison squints at him, and Lucien doesn’t know when he started referring to the mark by her name, but it doesn’t suit her.

“Well those two were plants, clearly something is going on.” Addison approaches, and angrily tears at the hem of her dress, it’s a deep shade of violet that off sets just how pale her tube engineered skin truly is. “Hold still.”

Lucien hisses for real this time as she wraps the wound.

“It won’t help for long, but it should be enough to get you out. On that note, we should move. Now.”

Addison heads for the stairs, and this should be the point where Lucien takes his snub nose from his ankle holster and puts one in the back of her head instead he finds himself asking

“How did you learn to do this?” He gestures to his shoulder.

They are halfway up the stairs before she answers “Matteo, my bodyguard, he taught me. He figured if I was going to go to these places that I needed some survival skills to back myself up.”

Lucien pauses on the stairs. “My name-”

“I don’t want to know. Just keep moving.”

“I know yours Miss West, it’s only proper that I give you my name in exchange.”

Addison just keeps climbing silently fuming, and yes being shot at kick starts ones adrenaline but Lucien had been expecting a whiny brat, one that went to pieces at the first sign of trouble, he hadn’t expected someone prepared to dress a wound, someone with a contingency plan.

“Listen when I get you out of this, then you can give me your name handsome, til then just accept my apology for getting you shot.”

“How do you know they were there for you?” Lucien is genuinely curious.

“I can buy one new face at that table, but three? No. Plus they took Matteo out first. Matteo was ex private military, an ex heavyweight boxer, and has been my shadow since I started school.

Everyone who knows my family knows I don’t leave my apartments without Matteo to watch out for me. Father’s orders.”

Lucien nods, clearly even Mallory West underestimates her daughter’s intellect.

“Okay, I’ll give you that.”

*********

Addison shoulders the door open and slips through, the crowd is really going now and all she can do is hope that there aren’t any more surprises waiting for her.

Mr Suit and Tie is following her, and she does feel bad that he got shot but she knows that getting worked up won’t help the situation.

“I called my brother, he’ll meet us somewhere safe. From there we can get you home.” Addison has been at card tables since she was 12, she got thrown out of her first school for running a less than legal card game and now she watches Suit and Tie’s face and something twists in her stomach.

Addison had just spent an hour with the man, and even when he’d been 500 credits in the hole he hadn’t broken a sweat. Now those vivid green eyes won’t meet her own cosmetically enhanced violet ones and she begins to wonder but decides to let things play out. Being a West meant knowing how to play the game.

“Uh Miss West, shouldn’t we get a Sec team?” Addison shakes her head, chuckling quietly.

“Drop the Miss, eh? Just West will be fine.” Addison can’t decide if this guy is trouble, or if he is Mr Wrong Place, Wrong Time.

“Okay West, where to?”

They make it to the front entrance of Luxe before she hears the tell tale crackle of an energy rifle.

Addison hasn’t fired one, but she’s heard them before, and now she smells burning.

“We gotta move.” Addison feels herself shoved out the door and into a mostly deserted corridor.

The burning smell stays with them and as she hauls Suit and Tie toward a set of silver elevator doors.

When the doors seal shut Suit and Tie slumps against the wall and he has both hands pressing to a fresh burn on his side.

“Maybe they are after you handsome.” A grim smile through gritted teeth greets her, there’s a sheen of sweat on his pale face.

“Lucien. It’s Lucien Spires.”

“I thought I said to keep it to yourself until we were in the clear.”

“I know, but maybe there’s something else you should know West.” Addison already knows.

Dammit.

“So you wanna collect on me now, or wait till those doors open?”

“I was thinking I would let you go.”

“Sure, at least tell me what the pay cheque would have been? Please tell me that you weren’t going to take less than a mill” Studying the shifty look on Lucien’s face Addison shakes her head

“What? Did they short change you? Damn. My stocks alone are worth at least 800 thou in credits. I’m disappointed in you Spires.” He starts laughing, which turns to a hacking cough.

“500 thousand credits, upon proof of completion.”

“I’m deeply hurt, that’s my monthly bookie allowance.” The doors open and showing a surprising amount of care Addison hooks an arm around Lucien’s torso and lets him lean on her as they try to hustle.

“Let’s get you patched up while you decide once and for all whether to collect or not.”

Addison had done this more than once, flipped someone from a hater into a follower, and while she isn’t sure that having a hitman on the payroll will increase her portfolio she sure hopes it will deter anyone else from taking a shot.

There’s a red dot at her feet, and then two, and then five. Shit. Shit. Shit.

“Okay Spires, when I say run, you gotta haul ass, got it?” Lucien grits his teeth and nods. Addison isn’t sure that her new hitman will make it but since he had been planning on killing her for far less than what she is worth Addison doesn’t know if she is too worried.

*****

There’s a blur of varying shades of purple that moves down the mostly steel corridor and Lucien is doing his best to stay upright, and follow. Shots erupt behind them, and everywhere feeds are talking about “an electrical accident at a local club” because of course the Sec Team is spinning the story away from station wide panic.

A door slides open and he almost misses her dive into the opening, before he is being pulled inside with her.

“Confession time West, I intercepted the call you made to your brother.” Addison is at a console and he isn’t sure what she’s doing. “Figured that’s what happened. Sending him something now.”

“Is that safe?” Lucien is slumped on the ground, the left half of him on fire.

“It is when it’s from my father’s terminal. Now let’s see about getting you a med kit.”

Soon enough painkillers are being stabbed into his right shoulder and the familiar floating feeling has kicked in. Lucien begins to fight sleep, but he can’t. The black is all encompassing and he finally gives in and lets it take him.

When his eyes drift open there’s a scrap of paper in his hand, and it has to be from Addison because paper is more precious than gold on this station, and nobody else would think to waste it. Sure enough the ink is a sparkly purple, it looks more like lipstick than pen.

“This isn’t over Spires. We’ll be in touch.” -West

**********

“Addi, are you sure you’re okay?” Armstrong is standing over her in his kitchen, trying to inspect his sister for any sign that she isn’t herself.

“Listen A, I told you, I’m fine. Grab the bread would you?" Hip bumping her twin out of her way as she opens the fridge and starts pulling out meat, cheese, lettuce, and a tomato.

“Sandwiches? Are you seriously eating at a time like this? SOMEONE TRIED TO HAVE YOU KILLED?”

“And I am a growing girl A, I gotta keep my strength up. What if my blood pressure drops right when I need to run for my life?” Her twin frowns as he hands her bread, and butter.

“I can’t believe Matteo’s gone.” In that one moment she cracks a little, her voice softens, and her chin wobbles.

“Addi, it’s okay. It’s going to be okay.” The West twins weren’t raised to be affectionate. They found out a few years ago that they were only twins because their parents thought it would be efficient to just raise them both at once.

That doesn’t stop her brother from awkwardly rubbing her back as she assembles a pair of towering sandwich monuments.

They stand opposite each other in Armstrong’s kitchen, leaning on opposite benches with their feet just touching. Her toes are painted plum and his are in a pair of slippers as they silently consume what look to be mouth watering sandwiches.