I am both really happy and really jealous how articulate your thoughts are 
I like how much you’re already reading into things.
Same. I feel like this series handles this decently for many characters, but there is definitely room for improvement. (I have a whole rant. I’m so much better at criticising the things I like than complimenting them 
)
I’m slightly concerned about the way the Joshua/Estelle relationship will evolve, I hope the writers are not doing what I suspect they’re doing.
I also adored Lunar 2 back then! Never got into 1 but I should go back and play those games. Keeping an eye on the upcoming remasters to see if they seem faithful enough, would be a good chance. If not I’ll hunt down the old ones; it’s kind of a shame how original games are getting semi-replaced in the public eye by versions that sometimes do certain things worse.
I’ve been having little trouble with the Japanese in Trails so I don’t need it easier but it’s good to know I can probably relax and play no problem.
Much appreciate what you had to say on the characters too – I think it took me longer than you to notice the little touches that make Estelle stand out, but I agree, she’s been delightful. Joshua I’m still not 100% there on but I think the initial tropes did pull my attention away from the details you mentioned, and I’m expecting more and more out of him as we progress.
Yeah the tutorial stuff is trickier. I think I had an advantage there from playing a lot of Japanese RPGs and the like already now, so I kind of know how this stuff is phrased. Used to get to big tutorial pages early in games and groan hard, haha. But I’m way more picky than you and picking apart every little line everywhere when I don’t know one word haha. Slows me down a lot here and there but I don’t mind it.
Oh same, I have to stop from getting like relentlessly negative about the things that I like specifically 
I actually have lunar in my backlog too, never played it! I’ve written a PlayStation emulator so now I’m just playing or replaying tons of games from that era in Japanese.
I’m halfway through Threads of Fate currently (Dewprism in Japan). It’s cute and pretty funny but the gameplay is very basic.
I also finished Legend of Legaia a few months ago (I owned it in French as a kid but never finished it back then). It’s ugly but pretty good. Has an onsen too.
Thank you! This is a really kind thing to say.
I am sure I will have criticisms as things go on, and while I definitely see some places where it could fall into tropes I don’t like, I am pretty good at compartmentalizing stuff like that as to not let it contaminate the parts I do like. IDK how insightful I’ll be in every post going forward but I’ll try to highlight things I find interesting as we go along! I’m playing at a slow pace because work is busy and I have other commitments and games I’m having to play right now for stream so this game is just a before-bed relaxation activity for me, which means I’ll only really progress like an hour or two at a time for at least a little while. Hopefully I should catch up sometime in the next month or two lol.
I’m a little late but yay welcome to the club 
The tutorials are rough, but you should be almost through them. I remember it took me an hour+ just to get through the orbment one alone. G/L!
Lots of critics in this club then, because same. I do my best to keep it (mostly) positive on public forums like this one, but analyzing what makes stories work vs not work is so much fun. I also think it tends to be easier to name what you don’t like just because the bad parts will pull you out of a story and back into your thoughts. Nothing wrong with that!
Estelle can’t seem to get along with any small boy children, can she? I’m not sure what part the orphanage people will play in the upcoming storyline but their portraits tell me they’re very important. The story still seems to be in set-up mode for chapter 2 and I feel like any guess I make will be a shot in the dark.
Ruan is a really lovely change of scenery! That goes for the beach walk up to Ruan, also. I found one of those ポム monsters on the way and managed to beat one. 70 sepith for each element was so nice to get, the fire sepith especially. The battle suit armor was also so, so welcome. I equipped the anti-confusion charm as soon as I picked it up but Estelle was still destroying Joshua before he got that defense boost.
I also found the confrontation with the mayor interesting because of the talk about class differences. The bandana guys seem like an important element of that chunk of the city map so I think we’ll probably see more of them later. Fingers crossed for a nuanced, upcoming class conflict storyline 
Speaking of, is Gara actually a name? My first thought was that it was 柄, and you can find ガラの悪い as an expression on jisho meaning vulgar/ill-bred. I met 2 different NPCs warning of ガラの悪い連中 by the warehouses, but I thought they just meant shady people.
I like their dynamic as brother/sister but they might go there. We’re only at the start of chapter 2 and there have been many hints at feelings on Joshua’s side already. That doesn’t mean Estelle will be cool with it, but the tone of the hints makes me think that the writers are definitely cool with it.
Uh. Didn’t consider that. Could also be a pun I guess. We’ll know soon enough I suppose.
On the Estelle&Joshua situation, I’m not going to answer either way.
What I will say is people are welcome to check the trigger warning section of the home post. As far as I can tell there are three possibilities. 1. incest is not mentioned, and everyone is happy. 2. incest is mentioned because of Estelle and Joshua. 3. incest is mentioned because of a different couple.
As a reminder, doesthedogdie.com if people need to check for anything specific, and “Are there incestuous relationships” is a question available to be answered on that site.
There are different triggering scenes in different games. If you don’t want to know what they are I’m not going to tell you. If you do need to know, I intend to keep putting them in each game’s homepost. (I kinda feel like I’m being overdramatic in typing this all out, but trying to make clear how to find the information without straight up answering the question I’d rather be over cautious than under. If that makes any sense)
Oh I won’t be traumatized if it turns out that way, I just think it would be disappointing. I’m not a very triggerable person when consuming fiction. I just like good stories.
It’s not even just the incest angle (although, well, there’s that too) it’s also that healthy depictions of platonic friendships between girls and boys are not very common in this type of media and I think it’s more interesting than just shipping the two main characters together. Leave that hackneyed stuff to Tumblr fanfic writers…
I am playing on PC version from DLSite. First time bought from there, and I happened to have a JCB credit card, otherwise I might not be able to pay.
The installation was also a problem. Got through with locale switcher exe.
My version doesn’t have voice acting, but there are always possibility that bare reading is faster than also listening to voiced lines, not to mention voice being cut off by switching to the next line. Comprehension with voiced lines may be better, however.
And there is no rewind button, nor auto or skip like many VNs with voice. Some different games have skip, like from cinematics, though.
I played with a Xbox model joypad. Movement is fast and controlling up-down-left-right is confusing. Movement is confusing on the keyboard arrows too. Remapping the joypad might be possible, but I don’t know how that works… Also screenshot button works only sometimes. Maybe the game works well with a mouse, but my laptop doesn’t have that plugged in.
I love the new city so far. So scenery and touristy. About MC’s, ofc creators played on the tropes.
Not 鷹 nor 鷲, but 隼.
Oh, the dog dies? I am sure many オオカミ got defeated, but not sure if just knocked out or really…
Week 21 is ready
オオカミさん exploded into sepith. It seems to be a tad fatal, yeah.
I mean so do the bosses and bandits, no? Even those that don’t actually die.
Now of course, the enemies that drop meat or various body parts…
The human enemies tend to grey out and collapse to knees, but they don’t literally explode and disappear from the battlemap the way the monsters do.