Vocab Sheet , thank you to everyone who has been helping with this.
Please read the guidelines on the first page before adding any words.
Discussion Guidelines
Everybody should feel free to post and ask questions–it’s what makes book clubs fun! But please do not post until you are familiar with Spoiler Courtesy!
Spoiler Courtesy
Please follow these rules to avoid inadvertent ネタバレ. If you’re unsure whether something should have a spoiler tag, err on the side of using one.
Any potential spoiler for the current week’s reading need only be covered by a spoiler tag. Predictions and conjecture made by somebody who has not read ahead still falls into this category.
Any potential spoilers for external sources need to be covered by a spoiler tag and include a label (outside of the spoiler tag) of what might be spoiled. These include but are not limited to: other book club picks, other books, games, movies, anime, etc. I recommend also tagging the severity of the spoiler (for example, I may still look at minor spoilers for something that I don’t intend to read soon).
Any information from later in the book than the current week’s reading (including trigger warnings that haven’t yet manifested) needs to be hidden by spoiler tags and labeled as coming from later sections.
Instructions for Spoiler Tags
Click the cog above the text box and use either the “Hide Details” or “Blur Spoiler” options. The text which says “This text will be hidden” should be replaced with what you are wishing to write. In the case of “Hide Details”, the section in the brackets that is labelled “Summary” can be replaced with whatever you like also (i.e, [details=”Chapter 1, Pg. 1”]).
Hide Details results in the dropdown box like below:
Example
This is an example of the “Hide Details” option.
The “Blur Spoiler” option will simply blur the text it surrounds.
This is an example of the “Blur Spoiler” option.
Posting Advice
When asking for help, please mention the page number, and check before posting that your question hasn’t already been asked. As the threads get longer, it becomes more convenient to use the Search function, which is located in the upper right corner of the forum. It is the magnifying glass which is near your profile picture! The best way to search is usually to type part of the sentence you are confused about, and select “in this topic”. This will show you all posts within the current thread which has that string of text.
Be sure to join the conversation! It’s fun, and it’s what keeps these book clubs lively! There’s no such thing as a stupid question! We are all learning here, and if the question has crossed your mind, there’s a very good chance it has crossed somebody else’s also! Asking and answering questions is a great learning opportunity for everyone involved, so never hesitate to do so!
If necessary, include an explanation of any discrepancies in the Ebook page numbers from physical page numbers. If there is an easy shortcut for some ebook versions to relate back to physical page numbers, it would be worth it to include it as a third bullet here, or if you want to use chapter page numbers instead of volume page numbers, as is the case with some manga. For example:
Example
For the Kindle version of this manga, the page numbers and the location number are always 3 apart. If you subtract 3 from the location, this will give you the accurate page number!
OR
Please use the chapter page numbers, instead of the volume page numbers. These are located in between the panels!
Discussion Questions
What sentence/passage gave you the most difficulty? Feel free to request some help, or if you figured it out on your own break it down for the rest of us!
What was your favorite new vocab word from this week’s reading?
Was there any passage that you found particularly intriguing? Did it resonate with you (either positively or negatively)? Was it surprising? Offer any insight or new perspective? Was it just beautifully written?
Any thoughts on the side quests this week?
Which of the monsters has been most difficult/surprising to deal with?
Initial impressions of Agate?
Participation
Will you be playing along with us this week?
I’m playing along
I have finished this part
I’m still playing the game but I haven’t reached this part yet
I’m playing this game after the club has finished
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0voters
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Don’t forget to set this thread to Watching in order to stay abreast of discussion!
So I’m enjoying the story enough, but I have to admit I’ve been starting to find the gameplay… really grating. I guess a long week of side quest cleanup brings it to a head especially with how much time is spent wandering through these long hallway areas, but I dunno, is it just me? It feels like every enemy in this game is designed to inflict irritating status effects as often as possible, which got really bad when I wandered into the area where everything freezes you on hit. Seems like they want me using arts on these things to deal sufficient damage, but half the time charging an art gets interrupted by 2/3 of my party getting frozen and then I’m sitting around for 3 turns getting chipped to death… and maybe I need to explore the cooking system more or something but coming back from death is ALSO hard, kinda ends up forcing me to run through those long hallways back to town when my luck turns bad. And I learned the hard way that the retry button starts battles in the same shape you originally started them in, which during that quest to protect the guy from the sheep really punished me for pushing to fight 2 after an unlucky start. Kinda feels like every enemy is tuned to be so obnoxious they want you using turn delays and AOEs to play solitaire or you suffer for it. I’ve been kinda stressed recently so I probably have less patience for it than usual, but…
Status effects are rather annoying. Have you been using accessories? The ホワイトブレス available in the shop prevents 凍結 so is useful in places like the valley where lots of monsters can freeze you. There is still some trial and error before you’ve figured out which enemies do what though.
Sorry about this week being mostly side quests. This is going to happen again. Vague spoilers of when side quests exist: I was going to say I’d see if I could spread them out better, but looking at the next clump they will all need to be done immediately because they’ll expire too soon. That isn’t until next chapter though. This chapter just has the one side quest left.
Appreciate it! I hadn’t realized the option was there, my bad. Not to be annoying but just for the purposes of others reading I think you have it mixed up; that’s the 暗闇 one. Freeze is フレイムジッポー
Yeah no worries, totally not your fault. Seems more like a game pacing thing, and I very much appreciate you taking the time to put this together so well.
Trying to give it another shot with some equipment upgrades. I think I need to figure out the better arts soon, but I will say I’m jealous of the UI I’ve seen some other versions have for that list. Looking through twenty-six tabs like this is kind of a nightmare
Aww thanks, only if you’re sure that’s no trouble. The Vita version is working really well for what matters most to me, but it seems like a game where every single version has its quirks, advantages and drawbacks.
No trouble at all. I am quite fond of spreadsheets. (And it will be nowhere near as complicated as that time I tried to turn this series into a ttrpg for my uni friends and basically made functional orbments in the spreadsheet.)
Appreciate the help; I finished a lot of the side quests though I still have a few to go. I found things started going overall smoother, but it can go south REALLY fast. Got a bit of a stock of items to deal with people dying as well, and generally tried to prepare. Gonna keep working on it and try to just take this as me being on edge recently + I’m in the middle of doing a lot of things at once, including a few other JRPGs, like I just finished Dragon Quest 11 in Japanese 2 days ago. So with all that I’m occasionally butting up against lack of certain conveniences (which is fine, but can be harder when very directly comparing it with newer games at the same time), and probably not properly giving full focus to making use of everything the way I would be if I was solely giving my attention to this game. It’s funny having this issue because the story pace hasn’t bothered me in the slightest, where that seems to be what usually makes people bounce off, haha.
Ok, I’m hanging in there. I did all my sidequests. One of these days I’m gonna remember the word 琥珀, just you wait.
Some spoilers
The tower quest gives off the impression that these places are optional, which I honestly really did not expect. After the first one, learning there are 4 towers and they have kinda suspicious objects at the top, that’d be a major plot hook in practically any other series. I mean something more could still happen by the end, or maybe it’s even for a different game? Dodging enemies in those little hallways is pretty hard, so my theory is that the professor is secretly really strong. He better be our postgame superboss
In the tower I got back attacked by a group of 6 bugs so I was scared, but then they missed all 8 of their attacks so… lol. Kinda feels like I did some things out of order because some enemies are suddenly way easier or harder than others, but the tower ones for example also give pretty much no XP, so I dunno. I wanna upgrade orbment stuff more, but I’m lacking red while swimming in others. Gonna have to look closer at weaknesses cause I can tell some enemies take no damage from certain things, especially having physical resist super high at times.
Was nice to discover a free healing house in the misty place, but despite seemingly being mostly a few straight paths, navigating in this game confuses me at the best of times a little bit so I don’t want to go back in there ever again
The military guy we met was being kinda overly obstinate, I know… but this group also immediately went out and gave away every existing piece of information on an active hostage situation to a reporter explicitly saying he’s going to publish it all! Maybe we shouldn’t be trusted actually
Agate doesn’t make nearly as interesting of a first impression on me as some of the other characters, but I’m sure he’ll be already when he’s actually developed.
I noticed the list in your screenshot had the arts in a slightly different order from the notebook in my version of the game, so after I made the list I looked up the evo version to check for differences. There were a lot more differences than expected, and so that’s why it looks a bit messy. It’s editable if anyone wants to fix that / correct info from the version I don’t have.
