#anyway ive beaten this game twice now and it's still so fun

[cyphyra]

ok so after i was freed from having to be on my dog's schedule i came across a neat little game called Pseudoregalia a buncha people seemed to be recommending and looked pretty neat (and the protag is cute, sue me >.>)

now, normally, platformers drive me up the damn wall and i cant play them, because most of them give you tools you need to be EXTREMELY precise with, but Pseudoregalia makes it feel like you can fuck up and still manage to scrape by depending on what abilities you've picked up

i had a few moments of genuine pain smacking my head into a wall over and over, but the movement is just extremely responsive and made it feel satisfying when i'd do something i dont think i was supposed to do at the time

there's only 2 main gripes i have with the game-- one, the combat is kinda ass comparative to the platforming; basic, un-upgradeable 1-2-3 ground combo, no aerial combo (in favor of getting a vertical boost for movement which is fine, but still a bit annoying if you dont realize you're in the air going for a combo. lock-on also doesnt move the camera to face the enemy which causes some awkward angles) two, it is criminally short, and a bit bare for collectables imo. most are behind locked doors and ones that arent are usually just health pieces. but im not too upset about collectibles cause if there were useless ones id just say they're useless so, there's that. but it really is far too short-- and i mean that in the most appreciative way i can; this game fucking rules and i want to play so much more of it but there's no more game after the major keys + final boss ;^;

tl;dr: i have my gripes, but the game is honestly phenominal and for 6 bucks I'd recommend it to literally anyone who just likes fun games, platformers, retro styles, or cute goat-cat-bunny women (im so goddamn normal abt Sybil i swear)

[flor3nces]

among us | harry potter x slytherin!fem!reader

hi! just know that ive never read nor watched the harry potter series so this is not 100% accurate. then again this is a bit of my take on how i think these certain characters would act when introduced to a muggle game. although i do have my fair share of knowledge about the characters and such. i might make a part two to this that shows the reader play with the malfoys if they agreee to do so. you can see harry j. potter x reader if you squint just a little bit! anyways, enjoy reading! <3

y/n had recently been into this new game called, “among us.” she was utterly fascinated by the muggle world and would often spend her summers in muggle london as they would call it.

her friends at hogwarts would look at her as if she were crazy everytime she told them she would be spending time there. y/n was used to it though. it never really bothered her.

it took the golden trio a while to warm up to y/n. they weren’t so sure if she was just befriending them to rat them out to umbridge but as time passed they realized that wasn’t the case.

“slow down gryffindors!” y/n had been wanting to play with them ever since she found out about the game when she snuck off one night.

the three friends stopped at the voice. they were discussing what they were going to do for the summer before a certain y/h/c haired girl called out.

hermione loved having another girl around, she could only handle hearing about quidditch so much. the boys weren’t so happy as both the girls often teamed up against in whatever it was they were doing.

“hey y/n.”

the girl sent them a huge smile. “okay, so there’s this new game-“

“if it’s not quidditch, does it really matter?”

y/n raised her brow at ron as if challenging him to continue. the weasley quickly shut his mouth. although he has known her for quite a while now she could still be very intimidating.

“as i was saying, i think we should play it on the first day of summer. i know you three are spending it together so i thought we could play it before that.”

the three looked at one another before looking back at her. they had been wanting to invite her to spend the summer over at the burrow but draco had beaten them to it.

it absolutely baffled them that y/n was even friends with him. although, she was slytherin they figured she wouldn’t want to talk to him as she was friends with them. while it may have been foolish for them to think that, they couldn’t help it.

“what is it?”

harry watched as y/n’s eyes lit up as his question. “okay so,” the girl started walking towards the courtyard, her friends right behind, “it’s called “among us” and it’s a super fun game. it may be a muggle game but merlin is it fun! i played last night with some of my friends and had a blast.”

y/n turned around as she was saying her last words to look at her friends faces. “how do you know about it if you’ve been here at hogwarts all this time?”

hermione rolled her eyes at ron’s stupid question. “she obviously snuck off last night, ronald.” ron shot a glare towards the brunette before turning his attention back towards y/n.

“so, will you guys play? it’s alright if you don’t want to! i just thought you’d guys enj-“

harry cut her off. he couldn’t stand listening to y/n ramble nervously as she thought they might say no. “we’d love to. it sounds like fun.”

again, he didn’t miss the way her eyes light up. “explain the rules and we’ll play tomorrow.”

hermione and ron nodded at their best friends words. y/n couldn’t have been happier. she didn’t think she could handle hearing no from them.

***

“i want to be red, harry!”

y/n had suggested they play on computers. it took her about a good hour or so to teach harry, ron, ginny, the twins, luna and neville how to use it. hermione already knew how as she had grown up with muggle parents and they had a computer of their own at home.

the boys had been arguing over who was going to be red for the past ten minutes. everyone was spread out, but they had mistakenly put ron and harry a bit too close.

almost everyone had already picked out their colors. the twins were black and white. ginny, purple. neville, dark green. hermione, orange. luna, blue. y/n, yellow.

“i’m the chosen one, i should be able to get whatever color i want.”

everyone rolled their eyes at this. harry often pulls the “i’m the chosen one” card everytime he wants something. “harry, for the love of merlin, just let ron be red and you can have light green.”

y/n had had enough of listening to the two boys bicker. hermione was about to yell at them but y/n beat her to it. much to hermione’s dismay, y/n had only used a stern tone with them.

harry glared at ron before grumpily changing his color. ron stuck his tongue out at him and chose the color red with a smile.

the twins snickered at harry’s face. it always brought them so much joy watching harry and ron argue. as they could never stay on a single topic for more than five minutes before moving onto another.

“can i press start now?” neville asked. y/n sent the boy a soft smile before nodding.

***

ginny let out a gasp. everyone’s brows raised at the sound. “where?” y/n asked.

“it was in navigation.”

“right, who killed luna!” luna let out a laugh as she sat back and watched her friends debate on who they thought the imposter was.

“i bet it was ron.” harry was obviously still bitter about having to change his color, not that he’d ever admit it out loud. “oh, shove off harry! i was with you and you know it!”

everyone let out small giggles at this. “it might be one of the twins.” ginny looked at her brothers quickly as she was ready to vote either of them out. “but who?” hermonie was so close to finishing her task and then ginny discovered a body.

“i don’t know nevilles been awfully quiet, you guys.” george said. “yeah, he probably killed luna.” fred added on.

“my vote is still with ron.”

“i was with you the whole time!”

harry mocks ron as he votes. “i’m voting fred.” hermonie nodded at y/n’s words voting for the slightly taller twin aswell.

ginny went for fred while as the twins and neville went for hermonie. ron voted harry just to piss him off.

“what! i’m not the imposter!” hermonie exclaimed. “you were quick to vote for me.” george nodded at his twins words.

***

“stop following me ron!”

y/n was running around aimlessly as she had finished her task and was looking for hermonie. unfortunately, for her ron was starting to follow her.

“why? the buddy system, y/n, the buddy system.”

“screw the buddy system, ron! get away from me.”

fred and neville had found both ron and y/n. “ha! now you can’t kill me because you have witnesses.”

fred went for the kill first. neville following soon after. the gryffindor boys vented to separate places. “y/n and ron were dead in security.”

“it’s fred, i’m telling you guys!”

“no it’s not, hermonie.”

“vote fred. don’t listen to him.”

ginny didn’t have to be told twice. “don’t worry y/n i’ll avenge you!” ron mocked a hurt expression. “and me right?”

“yeah, yeah. you too.” ginny waved her hand dismissively. harry tried to cover up his laugh but failed and let out a snort.

“oh, shut up harry!”

***

everyone quickly became obsessed with the game. the weasleys, hermonie, and harry often writing letters to y/n, asking her when they could play again. neville and luna sending letters as well.

the slytherin girl couldn’t help but feel proud at this. she decided to take her chances and show it to the malfoy’s.

though she knew it might take a whole load of convincing them, she weighed out the pros and cons.

lucius liked her enough to not hex her for asking to play a muggle game. draco had come to adore muggle london, though he would never admit it. and narcissa was always willing to try something new to get her family together.

if they said no, she could always just ask draco to play with her. but even then he might say no. that’d hurt her a bit if he did. y/n didn’t mind playing by herself in a game with random people. she just preferred playing with friends.

“i think we should have a game night.”

bringing it up during dinner was the best idea. that way she’d at least have time to run a few feet from lucius before he’d hex her.

the malfoy’s perked up at this. they haven’t had a family game night ever since draco got into his third year at hogwarts.

narcissa told it upon herself to ask what they were playing, figuring as neither her husband nor son would ask.

“so.. um.. it’s a muggle game?”

[espytalks]

Your thoughts on games are always really interesting. Also I totally hear you on why that ending didn't satisfy you, it sounds... really anti climatic in general and stressful for someone with social anxiety. Plus maybe it was cooler when it first came out and a bunch of people would have beat it, but it's something that's gonna get worse and worse the less people are playing, which isn't to my taste. Anyway, love hearing your thoughts on games, you make a genuinely good critic, at least to me

yeah, it definitely would have been better when it was more popular. at the very least, more people would have been around, so it’d be fun to watch the chat for a while. 

which sucks, cause at the time i got the game, which WAS early enough in it’s life, my computer was shit at games, so a lot of games were either unbeatable or unreasonably difficult, including this one. i didn’t get this computer until about a year after i got the game, and ive been playing it on and off since in the hopes one day i’d actually make it.

ive beaten hard games before. i love cuphed and hallow knight, which were also very hard, and there was about the same level of reward, but i didn’t feel betrayed like i do now. i think mainly it stems from my own high expectations, which isn’t the game’s fault. i’m not even mad at anyone who said the ending was worth it. i’m ok with the reality that it’s ultimately my own fault i feel like this.

maybe i’ll play it again one day. there’s only three achievements: one for getting to the top once, twice, and fifty times. i know ya get a golden cauldron for doing that, but i doubt i’d actually take the time to beat it more than twice lol. 

despite how i feel, i’d still recommend the game, but only if you’re willing to play a challenging game for the sake of it. i think there’s a lot of pride in doing it, and i don’t think my time was wasted. it made me think, and i appreciate the reminder that if you keep going, you can accomplish whatever you want. 

the game was rarely unfair, but i do very strongly recommend to please get a decent mouse, and have plenty of room to move it around. i used a wireless one on a fold-out table i had, which gave me plenty of space, and quite a few obstacles would have been much harder if i didn’t have all the space i needed.

so yeah. if you make it, just. be nice. maybe tell em caty sent ya.

[theshinobiway]

Hey there! Ive always wondered how the members of team Gai would react to being tickled? Who's the most ticklish and who would be most likely to tickle back? I love your blog and writings so much, keep it up!

Anon, I was cracking up at this request and trying so hard to make it through when I was writing it. There were a lot of times where I had to pause, take a laugh break, then try to get back to it. I got a little ridiculous with it, but I figured this is what you were looking for anyway.

Also, thank you so much for the kind words! It really means a lot!! Thanks as always for contributing to the blog!

Headcanons: Tickling / Being Tickled by Team Gai

Might Gai

Tickling

Ø  Uh, what? You want to tickle who?

Ø  Son, this man has ten inches of steel. No, not there—well, of course there but that’s not what we’re talking about—I meant he has ten inches of steel in the form of muscle that covers his entire body. You think this man can feel a tickle?

Ø  He’ll play along, though. If he notices you trying to tickle him, he’ll act like he is. Poorly. He doesn’t want to discourage you from trying because he thinks it’s adorable—S/o or not.

Ø  You’ve tried everything, from getting the jump on him to using a variety of tools. Nothing. Gai just looks at you with confusion.

Ø  You try with backup one day (probably in the form of his team plus Naruto) who are too morbidly curious to pass up on the chance to figure it out for themselves. Neji and Tenten justify it by saying it might be to their advantage to learn one of their Sensei’s weaknesses.

Ø  You manage to capture him and try every method you possibly can. Naruto makes clones and tries every spot he can. Lee flails around. Neji attempts a modified version of 8 Trigrams. Tenten uses any object she can think of. All end in abject failure, no matter what you do. (Why does this play out like a Rock Lee Spinoff Skit? Hire me already, VIZ.)

Ø  Hold on, you try his feet. He’s wincing, he’s squirming, this might be it! He’s opening his mouth and he…!

Ø  Sneezes. Are you kidding me.

Ø  However, the minute Gai gets drunk, he’s ticklish everywhere. It scares the crap out of you because it’s so unexpected.

Ø  His laughter wakes the dead. It’s not even subtle, he’s screaming. Scream-laughing. The village hates you now. Stop tickling him before Tobirama Senju rouses from Konoha graveyard himself and kicks your ass for disturbing his death.

Ø  Drunk Gai is ticklish everywhere. You could poke him and he’ll collapse, wheezing.

Ø  NO ONE IS EVEN TOUCHING GAI AND HE’S LAUGHING.

Ø  “The Wind! It’s tickles!! It will be my undoing!”

Ø  “Fuck’s sake, Gai.” – Kakashi Hatake

Being Tickled

Ø  You can tell he find the idea of tickling entertaining. The only way you get tickled by Gai as a non-s/o is if it’s part of a joke routine.

Ø  He’ll do it in public too, so you might have to physically fight him for embarrassing you.

Ø  He’ll probably launch a surprise attack during a training routine, or if you’re too sluggish during a training session he’ll attack you to liven you up. Gai’s methods are always unorthodox anyway, there’s nothing abnormal here.

Ø  Try to launch a counter-attack and realize that God is dead. Since Gai isn’t ticklish, he’ll stare at you in confusion before lightening up. “Oh! It seems your energy has returned once more! Now, time to unlock the full potential!”

Ø  Uh. What.

Ø  OH HELL NOW HE’S GOING AT IT. RIP you sad soul, your first mistake was laughing. Now he thinks it’s a valid way to wind you up for exercise.

Ø  A relationship with Gai involved regular tickle fights. It actually becomes a regular occurrence. Gai’s relationship is lighthearted. He’s the kind of s/o that you’re best friends with (move over Kakashi) and that doesn’t get upset pretty much ever.

Ø  Gai memorizes where you’re ticklish and sometimes will tickle you as a greeting to get the jump on you. He thinks it’s hilarious no matter how much you (playfully) throw fists at him to complain. Now he can’t even resist.

Ø  He always stops when he realizes you need a break. He’s pretty good at noticing when a sweet, funny moment can easily turn into not-so-fun. He doesn’t let the mood get ruined.

Ø  His tickling also comes with incessant teasing. Oh, and cheek kisses. Lots of cheek and face kisses all over while he goes for your weak spots.

Rock Lee

Tickling

Ø  Lee is ticklish everywhere. The repetitive motion of tickling is what does it for him, he has a weakness for it. But gosh, is it so hard to tickle him.

Ø  He squirms around like no other. Limbs fly in every direction. His face turns red with laughter and he can’t hold still. You almost feel bad because he gives you puppy-eyes when you try.

Ø  Those puppy-eyes guilt you into stopping every time.

Ø  He pretty much can only manage to say “Nononono” and maybe your name if it’s not too long.

Ø  Lee can take a lot of punishment tickling. He doesn’t have any hard feelings about it either, he’s mostly just bewildered by what just happened.

Ø  He might suggest regular tickling as part of a training routine to up his endurance. Okay, cool, so you try multiple times. Does it actually increase his endurance? No, but you get more of cute, giggling Lee, so it’s worth it. (HIRE ME VIZ.)

Ø  Getting tickled by his s/o is something that warms Lee’s heart. It reminds him just how much he can be himself around you and how easygoing your relationship is. He doesn’t mind any jumps on him (unless it causes an accident, then he’s just concerned for your safety first.) and welcomes the notion that your relationship can be full of little everyday surprises—big or small.

Ø  Once or twice, he holds his breath and kisses you to make you stop. God Lee is just so sweet. Of course you stop, but now Lee’s giggling because he’s kissing you. It’s a win-win.

Ø  Occasionally he’ll pout if you launch a full-on tickle attack while he was doing something, but he’s just joking. Give him more kisses and you’ll see that right away.

Being Tickled

Ø  Lee will probably only try to tickle his s/o, unless someone convinces him—FOR SOME REASON—that so-and-so needs to be tickled as part of a…whatever, training, mission, bar mitzvah, funeral, look. Lee is not a hard boy to convince.

Ø  At first he… doesn’t really know how to tickle? You’re laughing because he looks so ridiculous doing it. He literally just wiggles his fingers a bunch and hopes it does something. He’s so easily tickled he doesn’t understand just how it works.

Ø  Wh—WHO TAUGHT LEE TO TICKLE!? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!

Ø  When Lee learns how to tickle, he’s the master. Once he tried it on Neji. Both of them agreed that doesn’t count as an official victory in Lee’s favor. Only because it wasn’t really a ‘match.’

Ø  He is the Beautiful Blue tickle monster Beast of Konoha. None can withstand his fury.

Ø  It’s canon that he has tickled at least one of his opponents to victory.

Ø  As an s/o, tickling can be a regular occurrence with Lee. He loves getting the jump on you and hearing your laugh. He will literally do anything to make you laugh.

Ø  If you hate tickling, he’ll honestly be kinda miffed about it because he thinks it’s a cute couple thing to do. He’ll let you do it to him still, though.

Ø  Lee nuzzles you before, after, and sometimes during a tickle attack. He’ll giggle along with you because he thinks that your laughter is infectious. If you’re seriously trying to pry his arms away, he’ll let you.

Ø  Once or twice he’ll blow raspberries on you if you both are really in a goofy mood. It makes his heart flutter when you can’t hold back your laughter.

Ø  It doesn’t matter if you’re newly dating, long-term, or married: Little moments like this don’t die off with Lee.

Ø  Lee will pass the habit of tickling to your children (if you have any.) He’ll even teach them to attack you, thinking it’s adorable when you get caught off guard. Of course, the only valid response is to team up with your kid(s) to get back at Lee.

Ø  God you all have such a fluffy dynamic. It’s the envy of Konoha.

Tenten

Tickling

Ø  Do you want to die? This is how you die.

Ø  Needless to say, trying to tickle someone with an entire army of weapons saddled on their hip at all times isn’t for the faint of heart.

Ø  Tenten isn’t as ticklish as her teammates. But she is very ticklish on her lower stomach and her feet.

Ø  There are three ways this can go: You’re her s/o and don’t go too hard at it the first time you attempt, you’re her s/o and launch a full scale tickle attack, or you’re not her s/o and you simply try at all, (maybe with help)

Ø  You can tease her about being ticklish, but she’ll pout about it. It’ll be really cute when she does.

Ø  If you’re her s/o and blow raspberries on her stomach, she’ll giggle. Then you die.

Ø  She doesn’t even like your breath anywhere near her stomach. It’s that bad. Even during more intimate moments, she prefers if you just skip her stomach entirely.

Ø  Catching Tenten in a serious tickle attack is asking for it. Even if you can pull it off, she’ll have broken up with you at least three times during the attack. Give her lots of love after until she comes around.

Ø  Now, Tenten appreciates a good prank. More than the other members of the Konoha 12. She doesn’t always like being pranked, but that’s the name of the game. Prank wars are a regular occurrence with her in a relationship. If this falls in with that, she’s more forgiving.

Ø  She has the cutest giggle. Part of her is trying to be furious with you, but she actually enjoys being tickled a little. She thinks it’s a really cute way to be playful with your s/o.

Ø  If you’re not her s/o and you tickle her: You’re getting beaten, strung up, and left to hang in one of Konoha’s many training grounds. You had better hope someone finds you, because she isn’t coming back for you. Same goes for anyone that tried to help you in the attack.

Ø  Three days later, you (and your accomplices) have acknowledged that the weapons mistress of Konoha should probably be the next Hokage.

Being Tickled

Ø  Tenten does not forget the time you got the jump on her and has plotted her revenge accordingly.

Ø  She gets creative. Really creative. She stalks you for a few days, mapping out your patterns, taking note of all of your habits. She has your entire day down pat before launching a counterattack.

Ø  You sit down for lunch one day, then the next moment you wake up in an unknown location.

Ø  “Did you drug me?” “DID YOU TICKLE ME?!”

Ø  We will not speak of the horrors that occur over the next twelve hours.

Ø  You never tickle anyone ever again after that incident. And every time you so much as see a feather or someone makes a tickling motion with their hands, you may or may not have flashbacks.

Ø  With her s/o? What are you talking about? This is the privilege of being her S/O. Non-romantic parties get left in the woods.

Ø  If it was part of a prank, then given Tenten’s extremely playful nature, tickling can be a regular-not-as extreme occurrence.

Ø  You can get away with cute moments of tickling her now and then if you don’t go for those spots. Her sides aren’t nearly as ticklish, but they’re enough to make her giggle. You’ll get loads of cute moments laying in bed, joking with each other, and the occasional tickle to punctuate a joke aimed at one another. Those are the best moments.

Neji Hyuga

Tickling

Ø  DO YOU WANT TO DIE? BECAUSE IT SOUNDS LIKE YOU WANT TO DIE

Ø  Okay first off, hats off to you if you can catch the man with 360 degree vision unawares enough to launch a tickle attack. Because that’s the only way you’re going to get close enough.

Ø  Neji is calm, often stoic, and proper. That being said, his self-control is through the roof. If he catches you, even for a split second, he can “turn off” his tickle response. The only way to successfully do it is to make contact and initiate your attack without him realizing what is happening until it’s too late.

Ø  Neji’s sides are extremely ticklish if you catch him. He practically drops to the floor on contact. You’ll never hear him laugh so hard, it’ll be a sight to see. If you’re relentless, he’ll have tears in his eyes and he’ll try to shove you off, but he won’t have the strength to do it. He’ll squirm around a lot, though.

Ø  His laugh is so cute? Neji never bursts out laughing hard, ever. His face is so flushed and, despite the fact it’s an automatic response, the smile won’t come off his face, even for a few moments after the tickle attack. He’ll be gasping for air and begging for you to stop, but he can’t really take in air to get the full words out.

Ø  He’s also ticklish behind the knees, but there’s a high chance he’ll knee you in the face—probably intentionally—if you try.

Ø  If you’re his s/o he’ll be super peeved and you’ll get the silent treatment for many days after, but you have a higher likelihood of forgiveness. If you’re not, your existence will conclude in less than 24 hours.

Ø  If you’re his s/o he will never admit in a million years he found your ‘attack’ so stinking cute, even if it annoyed the living hell out of him. He has a certain weakness for the little cute things couples can do, but man does it destroy his image.

Ø  If you’re not his s/o, your day ends either in the hospital or the morgue. If you had accomplices, such as Naruto or Lee (or both) and tried to sneak up on him, he has no problem sending three bodies to the same place. Which one? Depends on how merciful he feels that day.

Being Tickled

Ø  It’s hard to imagine Neji as the kind to tickle someone, and for good reason: he might do it once in his entire life.

Ø  The only way he’s going to do it is if you’re his s/o and you’ve launched a surprise attack before. He’ll have been giving you the silent treatment for a few days, still visibly annoyed you tried something so ridiculous and humiliating on him, but then he gets an idea: revenge, and a taste of your own medicine.

Ø  He’s calculating about it too. You’ll have just gotten home and you’ll say hello, fully expecting that he’ll give you a courteous nod and nothing more (like he has been for the last few days.) But he’ll actually say hello and hold his arm out, gesturing you to cuddle on the couch while he’s reading. Of course, after a few days of silence, the invitation is all so tempting.

Ø  You poor soul.

Ø  The minute you sit down with him, you know something’s off. You don’t get a chance to react. Now you’re in his lap and in a death grip, and Neji whispers something along the lines of “You’ve made a poor decision, haven’t you?”

Ø  Neji attacks every single ticklish spot you have in a flash. His hands move so fast it’s almost simultaneous. No matter how hard you wriggle, you can’t get away. He avoids every single thrash. The tickling only ends on his terms.

Ø  It occurs to you between gasps of air and laughter that he wasn’t giving you the silent treatment: He was plotting revenge. Oh shit

Ø  He doesn’t stop until you’re about to pass out from oxygen deprivation from laughing so hard. Mercy isn’t a word to him. There are no safe words. You chose your fate.

Ø  Bruh, why did you launch a physical attack on someone who can shut off all 361 tenketsu in a split second?

Ø  Once the debt is paid, the situation falls into the past. You have two options: turn this into an all-out war (…why would you?!) or resolve to let this be a lesson to you.

Ø  In the future if you get any more mischievous ideas involving him and he can tell, Neji will definitely brush his hand over your ticklish spot and give you the look as a warning. The cold shiver that runs down your back when he does helps you reconsider.

Ø  You’ve reconsidered. You’re not doing it.

[lechevaliermalfet]

Rise, and Escape – A Long Look at Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter

Quick note: This deep dive write-up was originally posted elsewhere in May of 2015.  I’m polishing it for reposting here.  In addition, for those interested, a while back I recorded a podcast-type thing for a project called Pause Menu Monologues, which was being done by an acquaintance of mine.  Said monologue was derived from a cut-down version of this effortpost.  For those interested, you can listen to that here. Now, on to the main event.

As I prepare to leave my current job for another with far better opportunities, it feels tremendously appropriate to talk yet again about a game premised almost entirely on the idea of escape.

I’ve written about Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter before, but it was requested that I write about it again.  It was @squeemcsquee making the request, so I listened more than usual.  I’m sure I’ll probably wind up saying a lot of the same things I said on the first go-‘round, but who knows?

Well, here’s something I didn’t say before this writing: When I first introduced her to Dragon Quarter, she got into it.  Really into it.  Given her relative inexperience with Japanese role-playing games, this was surprising to me; it’s so different from the usual run of JRPGs, especially as the genre stood in about 2003 or so when the game first came out.  Contrarian that I am (at times), that’s part of what endeared it to me.  But as she pointed out, the things that made it seem out of the ordinary to me meant very little to her.  She didn’t have much ���ordinary” to compare it against.

Unfortunately, watching her play it made me want to play it also.  Part of this is the natural (and deeply unfortunate) backseat-driving instinct I have whenever I’m watching someone do something that I’m familiar with, but feel they could be doing better, and in fact, if they’d just let me have the controller for a few minutes, I could show them exactly how… But part of it was also just that seeing the game played really made me want to be playing it myself.  This presented a problem, what with us having only the one copy.  It led to arguments.  Not, like, real arguments, but not exactly cutesy fun arguments, either.  We did, at the time, have both a working PlayStation 2 and a backward-compatible PlaySation 3, so it was only owning just the one copy of the game that was really a problem.  So the solution was pretty simple.

That’s how good it is. Dragon Quarter: The game so nice, we bought it twice.

Technically, we only bought the game once.  I bought it when it first came out, back in early 2003.  I played it for a while, and while it was pretty to look at, and it had good music, and the setting was interesting, it just didn’t come together for me.  Despite this, I had no desire to trade it in.  I had the feeling I was onto something good, though I couldn’t quite grasp it at the time.

I hadn’t had much experience with the Breath of Fire series then. I owned a copy of Breath of Fire IV, which was really the first game in the series that I even tried to tackle seriously.  Having unwillingly skipped over the 16-bit generation (owning a TurboGrafx-16 and five games hardly counts), my impression of the series at that time could basically be described as “like Final Fantasy, only not quite as inventive”.  It perhaps wasn’t a fair assessment, but I was basing this on the opinions of friends and acquaintances; I was unable to draw my own conclusions.  Still, I liked Breath of Fire IV well enough, even outside of some positive personal associations, so I hung on to Dragon Quarter, feeling relatively certain that one day, I would get the itch to try it again.

As it happened, I did, a couple years down the line.  The story and the characters were calling to me, and this time, everything finally clicked.

It probably helped that, around that time, I was beginning to become aware that JRPGs as a genre were becoming (or more likely, always had been) deeply conservative in terms of design, as well as character and story archetypes.  Realistically, this has probably been the case since the days of the original Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, and Phantasy Star.  But I got into these types of games in late 1998 with Final Fantasy VII; I was new to the genre in those days, so even things that were rote and by-the-numbers were fresh and new to me then. And in fairness, I’ve enjoyed a number of these types of games.  But by this time, I found myself wanting games in the genre to branch out and do something new.  So many of the mechanical mainstays of the genre, the “traditions” of JRPG design, began life as frankly clunky workarounds for technology that wasn’t really up to giving us a less abstract simulation of the expected features of a fantasy adventure: travel, exploration, fighting monsters, finding treasure, getting new and more powerful gear, and saving the world and any number of princesses.  If you wanted to simulate all of these things on older hardware, you had to have a certain amount of abstraction.  So you had your turn-based battles, your random encounters, and so on, and so forth.

By the PS2 era, the technology was rapidly growing beyond the need to adhere to these ancient abstractions for any reason other than nostalgia’s sake.  It had been doing this for some time – Chrono Trigger jettisoned random encounters back in the mid-90s, but despite the universal acclaim that game received, no one seemed terribly interested in implementing any of its innovations elsewhere.  Developers were, by and large, unwilling to grow out of those old ways.  In part this might be down to the reluctance of their audience (or at least a very vocal portion of it) to part ways with those same traditions.  But whatever the reason, the result was the same: stagnation. Or so it felt to me.

I wanted something that was different from the JRPGs I’d played before.  Something that still offered the thought and planning that went into playing an RPG of any kind, something with a good story and interesting characters, but which went off the beaten path and did something different.

And so, in late 2004 or maybe early 2005, two years after I originally bought it, tried it, and hung it up for the foreseeable future, I started playing Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter again.

It’s an odd beast, this game, even when you look at it in the context of its own series.  All the more so, really.  The earliest Breath of Fire games got compared to the 8- and 16-bit Final Fantasy games, at least by most of the people I knew back then.  Really, a more apt comparison would be to Dragon Quest, but I hadn’t played any of those games, and I was part of a group of friends who oddly lacked much experience with that series, so maybe nobody was in a position to make that particular comparison.  With most of my friends, Dragon Quest (then known as Dragon Warrior due to trademark issues; I feel so old sometimes) was always “That game where you grind for hours and hours and then you finally say ‘fuck this!’ and go do something else, maybe play Final Fantasy or go outside or something, I dunno”.

Anyway, the whole series up to this point had been pretty standard high-fantasy fare, with the unique selling point being the main character’s ability to transform into a dragon. Most of the game mechanics beyond this were pretty straightforward.  My experience with the series at large was pretty much limited to some time spent on the fourth game, and some time spent goofing off with ROMs of the first two out of idle and quickly satisfied curiosity.

One other consistent feature of the series is that the main character, the aforementioned dragon-transforming person, is always a young blue-haired swordsman named Ryu, and there is always a blonde, winged young lady named Nina who typically focuses on magic. Additional characters tend to be of all shapes, sizes, and species.

Dragon Quarter, by contrast, occurs in a future dystopia where humankind, having pretty much destroyed the environment through the use of biologically engineered weapons called dragons, has retreated to a single subterranean dwelling called Sheldar.  There, they survive as best they can.

In this society, everyone is given a rank, called a D-ratio.  On the surface of things, this ratio is a measure of one’s current ability and future potential, and places limits on their social standing, the kinds of jobs they can hold, places they can live, and overall determining just exactly how high they can rise in the world, figuratively and literally.

“Low-Ds”, that is, people with low D-ratios, live further down in this habitat.  The air is worse, people’s lifespans are shorter, and there are occasionally monsters called genics that roam around down there.  The people with high D-ratios live closer to the surface where the air is better and things are generally less dangerous. A nice touch is that, especially in cut scenes, the game is literally more hazy and grimy, visually, the further down you are.  As you go up, the environments gradually become clearer and brighter.  It happens bit by bit, so you may not notice it the first time through, but if you finish the game and start over again, the difference stands out.

One of the few story beats to be preserved is our hero: Ryu.  Here, he’s a low-D ranger, whose job mainly seems to involve security and hunting down genics.  His D-ratio is abysmally low: 1/8,192.  His current job is the very highest he can hope to achieve.  He’s partnered with another young man named Bosch, D-ratio 1/64. While Ryu is effectively at the very limit of how far he can rise in the world, Bosch is only at the beginning.  A D-ratio as high as his means he can potentially qualify to become a Regent, one of the four rulers of this underground world. Bosch is basically just paying his dues here.  He’s friendly enough to Ryu, in a condescending sort of way, which Ryu mostly just shrugs off.  What else is he going to do?

While reporting for an assignment with Bosch, Ryu succumbs to a brief fugue, in which he has a vision. He sees the decaying remains of a giant dragon spiked to a wall.  Despite clearly being dead, the dragon seems to talk to Ryu, mind-to-mind, though what it says to him makes virtually no sense at the time.  Not long after, Ryu comes across the real thing, though it is very visibly dead and inanimate.

A terrorist attack splits up Ryu and Bosch, and shortly thereafter, Ryu runs into this game’s version of Nina, as well as a member of the resistance movement Trinity, named Lin. She seeks Nina for her own – or rather Trinity’s – purposes.  The three form an unlikely but highly effective team.  But allying himself with these two has its consequences, and by the time Ryu and Bosch reunite, circumstances have made them into enemies. Bosch is a good fighter, and he has plenty of allies with him, but Ryu refuses to betray his new comrades. Thankfully, his encounter with the dragon was no mere dream or hallucination.  Unbeknownst to him, it has bestowed him with awesome power… and a deadline.

With every passing moment, the monstrous dragon power lurking within Ryu grows more prominent, threatening to overcome him.  While Ryu is in control, he can transform into a bestial form capable of slaughtering even bosses within just a couple of rounds of combat.  But drawing on that power accelerates its progress in overtaking him.

And so, with all hands turned against him, Ryu, Lin, and Nina have ultimately just a single option: Escape.

One of the things that I like about Dragon Quarter – one of many, many things – is the way that the game’s more prominent mechanics and its story are so closely intertwined.

The dragon power bestowed upon Ryu early into the game isn’t just a narrative device or story element, coming out only when dramatically convenient.  It’s also a game mechanic, in the form of what the game calls a D-counter. This is a number, a percentage, that appears in the corner of the screen.   As you play, it slowly ticks up toward 100 in intervals of a hundredth of a percent.  Everything you do in the game causes it to increase.  Everything.  Every 24 or 25 steps will cause it to increase by one interval.  Later in the game, this happens every dozen steps or so.  Ryu’s special D-dash ability, which allows him to avoid enemy combat, causes it to tick up faster.  Transforming, all by itself, raises the counter, and any actions taken while transformed increase it by whole-number percentages.  It is literally overpowered.  What I mentioned about crushing bosses in just a couple of turns was not hyperbole.  I’ve done it.  It’s basically my end-game strategy.

There is no way to drop the counter.  Ever. There are no items, no spells, no techniques which will allow you to reset it or undo any of its progress.  It just sits up there in the corner, slowly increasing and glowing ever more furiously as the number grows.  The tension between the temptation to use it whenever you’re in a bind and the punishing consequences of that use can be exquisite.

When I first heard Dragon Quarter described as a survival-horror RPG, it didn’t make sense to me.  But that’s mainly because I associated the mechanical elements of most of the survival-horror games I’d played with the more thematic elements of horror.  And there are horrific moments and images in Dragon Quarter; the world of the game is not a happy place, and its maintenance is not easily or cleanly done.  But that horror is mainly a consequence of the world-building; it’s not the point of the game.

The key here, I think, is the word “survival”.  You might more accurately call Dragon Quarter a survival-RPG, except it’s basically the only one of its kind that I know of.  It’s kind of hard to wrangle a whole genre out of that.

At their heart, survival-horror games generally “work” based on two principles.

The first is the fragility of the player character relative to other types of games, and relative to the enemies within the game.  You are not the hero of a more action-oriented game, who can take maybe a dozen sword strokes straight to the face and just keep going, or who can withstand a hail of gunfire and duck behind cover for a few seconds while your shields recharge.  Here, the player is reduced to a much more even footing with the enemies.  Every bit of damage taken is a significant setback that needs to be planned around, either to prevent it or to deal with it when it happens.  Every attack must be calculated.  This is because of the second principle, which is resource management.

The in-game resources, both those which you use to preserve yourself and those you use to eliminate your enemies, are finite.  So they must be spent wisely, frugally.  Because of this, you are constantly required to take a measured, careful approach to any situation.  You can never just blithely wander around; to do so invites disaster twice over.  In the short term, you risk serious harm, leaving yourself vulnerable to future threats.  In the long term, if you come out of the situation relatively unscathed, it’s generally at some expense of resources, leaving you ill-prepared for future encounters.  Carelessness becomes indistinguishable from suicide.

This puts pressure on the player to play extremely well at all times by punishing mistakes immediately and brutally.  As a result, some of the typical elements of JRPGs are missing.

There are no healing spells or techniques.  All healing – whether restoring health or curing negative status effects – is accomplished by way of expendable (and frequently pricey) items.  And you have to consider how often (if at all) you’ll be using some of these items, because inventory space is limited, and multiple items of a single type don’t “stack” very much before requiring another inventory slot.  And, naturally, the usual economics of JRPGs are in full effect.  Whatever you get for selling an item is a pitiful fraction of what it costs you to buy.

The game offers you the ability to use bait and traps to lure enemies into a position of compromise and get the drop on them, but even these need to be used sparingly.  There’s hardly enough for every encounter.

Interestingly, the game knows exactly how difficult it is, and gives you something of a way around the problem.

As with most RPGs of any kind, Japanese or otherwise, you earn experience points, new equipment, and new abilities as you go through the game.  In addition, Dragon Quarter also gives you what’s called Party XP. ��Basically, this is experience you can dole out to party members as you like to boost their levels.

Should you find yourself in a situation where you can’t progress without either having your party wiped or running the D-counter up to 100% (which, if it hasn’t become obvious by now, is an instant Game Over), you have the option to do what’s called a SOL Restart.  This restarts the game from the beginning, but lets you keep all the equipment and skills you’ve learned, as well as any Party XP you still have.  This gives you get a fresh start while retaining your improved gear, and the Party XP lets you give yourself a boost in the early stretches.

There’s also an option to restore a previous hard save along these same lines.  Dragon Quarter allows “soft” saves anywhere, but these are temporary by design.  Once loaded, these saves disappear.  There are only a few “hard” save points, from which you can restore at will, and to which you will be returned with a SOL Restore.

If this sounds ridiculous for what is typically a long-form type of game, it may help to understand that Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter is only about eight to ten hours long from start to finish on a single play through, once you know what you’re doing.  Even with a couple of full-blown restarts, you’ll be spending no more time on Dragon Quarter than any other game from the same time period.  Less, probably.

Writing this now, I just about want to say that Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter was Dark Souls before Dark Souls really existed. There’s a certain similarity in that both games are more difficult than usual while still being relatively fair, and in the expectation that you will die, probably more than once, and that rather than being a tragedy, it’s simply an instructive part of the experience. Or in the case of Dragon Quarter, you’ll experience (probably more than once) a situation in which death is basically a given should you continue, and the smart thing would be to cut your losses and restart.

Dragon Quarter’s infliction of pressure extends even to the representation of the game’s characters and world.

Most characters have a skinny, almost emaciated appearance.  Part of this is simple stylization, of course, but it still contributes to the overall effect.  These people live a thin and narrow existence, it says, devoid of the expansive pleasures humankind was meant to enjoy.  There is a grimness and a quiet desperation underlying it all.

The world itself is a fucking hole.  Corridors in the lower areas are littered with random junk and debris; it’s best not to think what it might all actually be.  The air is hazy and grimy, and things have a sort of cobbled-together look that just makes the whole place look cramped and dingy and uncomfortable. In these lower areas, everything looks like it’s about one stern look away from falling right apart.  The upper areas are cleaner, more solid, but can seem so sterile and strictly designed as to be hostile.  Dragon Quarter does a wonderful job of creating a world you want to get the hell out of as soon as you can.

It’s ironic, really. Most games, I play to escape from the troubles and stresses in my life.  And most games oblige this desire.  Even the ones that take place in barren wastelands tend to take place in gorgeously rendered barren wastelands that encourage you to examine every carefully tailored nook and cranny.  They’re an invitation to exploration and adventure, and are “barren” or “waste” only as a matter of aesthetics.

But limitation and escape are the central themes in this game, and a world in which such themes are explored must be more than a background or a prop.  

The world is limited in its size; an RPG with little to no detectable exploration, comprised mainly of tunnels and rooms, and a single clear direction and objective at all times.  The player's inventory of supplies is likewise limited, in keeping with the surival horror influence.  The player is frequently required to prioritize, and ditch whatever they aren't likely to use based on their play style.  Care must be taken by the player to work within these limits.

Narratively speaking, the story also explores the idea of limitations.  Ryu himself embodies these limits.  His D-ratio is among the lowest of the low.  His place in society, the ways in which he can define and express himself, how he can live – all of these things have strict limits placed on them. And this dragon entity, Odjn…  As much as it much as it appears to be the key to his salvation, as much as it empowers him to break all barriers and overcome or destroy all opposition, it limits him as well.  It puts a countdown on his life, ticking down the hours he has left until... well, until whatever horrific thing might happen when Odjn gains total control and breaks free.  

And in the end, the characters decide to break free of these limits placed on them by the world by breaking free of the world itself, to smash through the ceiling of it and see once and for all what lies beyond its narrow, choking confines.

Dragon Quarter is a game about escape.

Ultimately, this is a large part of what interests me about the story of Dragon Quarter, what keeps me coming back.  Rather than a big, trampling save-the-world epic, it’s about a group of characters who just want out.  This is a smaller story, a “tiny tale of time”, as the game itself tells us in its opening narration. It’s huge in its implications for its world and its characters.  It’s great in the scope of the ideas it asks its characters to contemplate.  (It flirts with Gnosticism, which immediately grabs my interest).  It that sense, at least, it does involve the end of the world, in one way or another.  But the scale is smaller, and the characters strike me as being more real because of it.

Ryu, Lin, and Nina don’t want to fight anybody.  There’s at least one memorable occasion where Ryu, surrounded by enemies, asks why they can’t just let him and his friends go.  The character animations in Dragon Quarter aren’t spectacular, but they get the job done here.  There’s something about the way that Ryu asks his question that seems to have layers.  On one layer, he seems mentally, psychologically exhausted from the strain of all the fighting, and the toll all the deaths he’s dealt out has taken on him.  On yet a deeper layer, he seems equally exhausted from fighting the thing inside him that threatens to take over and destroy him.

They aren’t trying to harm anybody.  And it seems reasonable just to let them go, on the one hand.  But on the other, there is the major problem that letting Ryu and company out of this subterranean pit will completely upend the social order – will end this idea of the world – purely as a side-effect of his escape.  Because the underlying problem with Ryu’s world is a variant on the same problem that keeps people in dead-end jobs and abusive relationships long beyond the point when, logically, they should be getting out.

Fear.

The world of Dragon Quarter is, as previously stated, an absolute, utter shithole in purely objective terms.  Even the people in charge don’t seem to be enjoying themselves much.  And it’s because everyone seems to be in unspoken agreement that even if the current circumstances are awful, at least they’re familiar awful circumstances.  It’s possible that things are better on the surface, but it’s just as possible that they aren’t.  It’s just as possible that they’re far worse.  This, at least, is the devil we know.

Even one of the main villains, the ruler of this subterranean nightmare, is ruled by fear. A thousand years before the story proper, he was given the opportunity to open this world to the surface.  But he backed down.  In his fear that the world above might still be the barren wasteland people left ages ago, he turned back at the final moment, sentencing himself and everyone in the underground to remain in it indefinitely.

There’s an anime I like quite a bit – it’s probably my favorite, really – called Revolutionary Girl Utena, and in it there is a bit of dialogue that is recited so often it’s practically a ritual.  It goes like this:

“If it cannot break out of its shell, the chick will die without ever being born.  We are the chick.  The world is our egg.  If we don’t crack the world’s shell, we will die without ever truly being born.  Smash the shell, for the world revolution.”

This is actually a paraphrase from the Hermann Hesse novel Demian: The Story of Emil Sinclair’s Youth (usually just known as Demian), in which it’s put this way:

“The bird struggles out of the egg.  The egg is a world.  Who would be born must first destroy a world.  The bird then flies to God.  That god’s name is Abraxas.”

To go up, to go out, to rise, to escape: This is an act of tremendous faith.