That moment you realise your Isekai is a Shounen.
Well that was a bit of a roller-coaster. Overall the ending of the Festival was good. Most of it was amazing, but one big frustrating chunk really brings down the average.
Bugs:
- During the phase one battles I got a “TypeError Cannot read property ‘subject’ of null” when starting a battle one time.
- One of the (many) times the slime got summoned it didn’t become viable until it took an action, although it could still be targeted.
- When the festival ended (after Richard left) got ‘ERROR: Tried to close objective ID 6 of quest with ID 20, but no such objective is registered.’
- Not sure if it is a bug but on several occasions I lost a battle in the first phase but things continued as if I had won. No obvious pattern.
- During the second phase the mutated hydrangea’s pink mist skill reduces Aura’s willpower, despite her not being involved in the fight.
- Perika did not decrease when Aura uses purification during the cutscene.
Non bug but annoying: what does the ‘numb’ status effect actually do?
Start with the bad news, the first phase battles are a nightmare and I fucking hate them.
- I acknowledge that it might have been my build to a degree. MATK and DEF is sub optimal for fighting Mammon. (Although I suspect an ATK focused build would be just as sub optimal for dealing with Arwin.) More critically I did the maid scenes so was at Curse I even starting from max willpower. That said…
- The RNG sucks. The slime always gets at least one spell off (unless you removed the collar) which will one-shot Paul or Charlotte at any health and John at anything but max. There is nothing you can do to prevent this. Mammon will sometimes open the battle by throwing his damage spell at Charlotte, which will one-shot her as often as not. There is nothing you can do to prevent this.
- Semi-related to RNG is Mammon going super saiyan. If he happens to have his buffs up when damaged enough to Enhance the damage spike can easily kill Aura without any time to heal. Similar if Aura is debuffed and he does one of his big attacks. On one occasion he went Enhance while he was buffed and Aura debuffed and did 161 damage with a basic attack.
- (A side note here but this very much highlights the problem of not being able to see enemy health. If you could gauge how close Mammon was to his limit break you could play around his buffs. Without that information it becomes just random chance.)
- Mammon is high health, high MDEF, low DEF and does not appear to be vulnerable to anything but Light. The merchant eventually gets flight, bombs every other turn and periodic full heals.
I assume there must be a Smart way to beat the first phase of this boss gauntlet. Some trick or strategy to winning without sacrificing critical amounts of stats. But for the life of me I cannot find it.
With that out of the way… everything else was amazing.
The second phase is pure gold. Both thematically and mechanically.
It has been a minor theme that for all her personal genius and drive, alone Aura
will fall. Only with friends beside her is she is invincible as she believes. This has been shown before, but never explicitly stated. The soldiers during the intro. Rose’s friendship being what prevents deeper mental changes. Paul snapping Aura out of the maid brainwashing. Here we see that brought forwards and highlighted.
Mechanically it is even better. During the first phase your allies are not entirely worthless but clearly not pulling their weight. Backed by Star Shine they are very much competitive again. More subtle but no less enjoyable is the fact that Aura’s fellow adventurers aren’t more powerful than Arwin’s monsters. In a direct, straightforward fight they would probably lose. However three non-sapient monsters and a merchant don’t have much skill and even basic tactical thinking makes the fight easy. Fight smart and victory is yours.
Thinking towards the future Star Shine is a great way of keeping other characters relevant while still allowing Aura to grow into the mantle of a Legendary Hero. It would rather undermine things if junior adventurers could level grind their way up to being demon king slaying powerhouses at the same speed as the Legendary Hero.
Also I look forwards to chapter two giving the opportunity to see powerful enemies get beaten to death by a lowly slime while Aura sits back and relaxes.
The final phase I can only describe as catharsis. The demon general is clearly powerful and clearly a threat. However with the Star Knightess running at full power you have everything you need to take him apart. After all that both Aura and the payer have been through it is exceedingly satisfying to indulge in some Righteous Face Punching.
The twist with Richard works well enough. I’m not particularly fond of the whole ‘no the villain wins anyway’ bait and switch tropes. But I will admit that it gives a good justification for why everyone on Roya isn’t suddenly going to be helping out now that Aura is known as the summoned hero. Also it is refreshing to have both the hero and villain insisting that this is clearly their victory. Having the protagonist be boastful, arrogant and hyper competitive helps to remind the player that the antagonist is also talking out his arse when claiming that everything is going his way.
I suspect that the Bad End for Aura isn’t going to be a Good End for Alicia. Richard is clearly toying with her. The only question is whether she will realise and try to betray him or just be thrown aside.
Somehow the fact that the Thugs were explicitly nameless bit parts makes their heroic sacrifice all the more meaningful. The soldiers at the start weren’t around long enough to get names. But these two are people Aura
could have known but didn’t see as worth her time. Yet they still gave their lives for her victory. The fact that a lewd RPGM game can inspire such emotion is a testament to the writing skill that has gone into it.