In Progress High Fantasy in the Age of Gunpowder: Let's play The Spirit Engine 2

Alex Heartnet · Jan 17, 2016

Well, I did say I was going to find a game you've never heard of.

Developed by a certain Mark Pay during a time where there was no room for the little guy in the gaming market, this game saw a modest commercial release during the Summer of 2008. What reviewers and bloggers did stumble upon it praised it quite highly. Over the next couple of years, the price steadily dropped until it was generously re-released as freeware.

The first game was a crummy amateur project. The second one is quite simply one of the best JRPG's ever made, as demonstrated by the mere fact that I am replaying this.

The setting is perhaps what Generic RPGLand would look like if it actually managed to get out of medieval stasis for a few centuries of technological progress. This is the age of gunpowder, where the battlefield is dominated by musket and cannon and what few swordsman still exist find the skills they spent a lifetime practicing to be useless. However, the wildlife is just as aggressive as ever and religion and sorcery remain alive and well.

Three citizens who find their paths crossing in an act of charity one dark night will find themselves burdened with the responsibility of not only defending the nation but deciding whether to save civilization as they know it.

...And there's also the game's absurd use of soundtrack. There are 101 (!) tracks for a total of over 2 and a half hours of music. Rarely is any given song used for more then one scene - instead a lot of the songs are simply very well placed and fit the action quite nicely. As such, I'll be pointing out whenever the music changes. If you want to follow along, the full soundtrack can be found on Bandcamp here.

Alex Heartnet · Jan 17, 2016

Current Music: 1. Fluttering

Naturally the first thing you do in the game is to gather your party before venturing forth.

Our potential party members include the following:

A reformed criminal

A strange wanderer

A catholic preacher!

A young squire

A lost soul

A Buddhist monk

A senior citizen

A former army officer

And last but not least we have Mysterious Masked Dude

Wow our cast here is considerably older then in almost every other RPG

We can only take one person from each row. Each of them has a specific role in the plot as much as in the party. It will always be the same chain of events regardless, but dialogue will differ massively. This also means that those of you following along at home can have a different experience then the rest of the audience!

We won't be using Ionae, Ferwin, or Enshadu. I've already
beaten the game with these three and this second playthrough is for my sake as much as yours. Other then that I'll leave it up to a vote.

Kaltos OR Mericious
Charlotte OR PyanPau
Denever OR Grace

Balanced party mix optional.

also theres this thing

I have no idea why Mark Pay (the developer) saw fit to put this in. It would make sense if we were building characters from scratch in classic CRPG tradition, but this it not the case here. I would put this up for a vote as well, but whatever you guys come up with won't match the game's serious tone. Instead I'll just leave it as My Party just to demonstrate how absurd this otherwise-trivial feature is.

Erebus · Jan 17, 2016

Alex Heartnet said:
Well, I did say I was going to find a game you've never heard of.

Think again !

I gave the game a try when it became freeware. It had some pretty good things, but I remember finding it a bit too linear.

I vote for Mericious, Charlotte and Denever.

lightbane · Jan 17, 2016

I remember considering to give this game a try, but I never did for some reason. So, will you do a screenshoot lp this time, Alex Heartnet, or will you record a mostly-video lp like you did for Convoy?

Either way, I vote for Mericious, Pyan and Denever. Also, the party name should be Warriors of Diversity.

Alex Heartnet · Jan 17, 2016

Erebus said:
I gave the game a try when it became freeware. It had some pretty good things, but I remember finding it a bit too linear.

I never like the exploration element of RPG's much anyhow. Linear works for me.

lightbane said:
So, will you do a screenshoot lp this time, Alex Heartnet, or will you record a mostly-video lp like you did for Convoy?

But my previous LP was a screenshoot lp! The only reason why I added video is because the combat was perfect for such - short and intense. This one will be a lot slower paced so no video.

Besides, Microsoft Movie Maker is being very uncooperative with me and refuses to process any video footage I try to feed it. If you go back and look at my previous thread you might notice that all of the video is raw unedited footage.

lightbane said:
Also, the party name should be Warriors of Diversity.

Sure why not better then anything I could come up with

I vote for Kaltos, Charlotte, and Grace.

AMG · Jan 17, 2016

Ha, I played and beat this game. I guess I will vote for Mericious, PyanPau and Grace, since I played with Kaltos, Charlotte and Masked Guy.
It's a really good game, nice story, cool fight system and without weeb shit, it's a jRPG non sugoi people can enjoy. That said, the battles can get annoying in the middle part of the game. I remember quitting it once, since it dragged on.
It also fulflls the "can't believe it's made by one guy" criteria. Shame, because it seems the author didn't find success and make any more games. Looks like a case of "born too early", since in the Greenlight era I think he would get decent money on Steam, it's a quality game. Actually, the guy should still totally put it up there, I bet he would shift good amount of copies.
Hope some people will try it out thanks to this LP, carry on OP :salute:

.

Alex Heartnet · Jan 18, 2016

Votes are in favor of Mericious! We have a tie for Charlotte/Pyan and Denever/Grace.

Unless you guys provide a tiebreaker I will get preference to a balanced party. That means Mericious, Charlotte, and Denever.

Nevill · Jan 18, 2016

Charlotte and Grace. Womyn power!!

(balance is horribly overrated anyway)

Alex Heartnet · Jan 18, 2016

Nevill said:
Womyn power!!

Sorry, but you got the wrong genre.

Nevill said:
(balance is horribly overrated anyway)

Of course not. We don't need a wide variety of abilities to make it through the game at all. Swordfighters are useless anyway in this day and age.

It's decided then. Our party will consist of Mericious, Charlotte, and Grace.

Ahh yes, adjustable difficulty. I'll start out on hard and see how long I last before I wuss out and lower it to easy. (and no, I am not locking the difficulty on hard you can do that in your own LP)

Like every other game ever, there has to be an intro cutscene! Or in this case, a bunch of still pictures...

Current Music: 2. Crack in Time II

...That is some interesting and slightly sinister imagery. None of it will be relevant later on, no sir.

"Trust in wisdom live in peace"?

Wow, you'd think that this coat of arms came from the Evil Empire or something. Is that a serpent on the shield?!

Why are there purple...tentacle...thingies growing out the back of it? What do those even symbolise, anyway?

I see a pair of golden wings on top. Us kings have a divine right to rule you know. The common person better do as the're told, otherwise we'll have to start slaughterizing the peasantry to put them in their place.

Very sinister indeed.

Just in case you couldn't tell from the main menu which game this is.

Yeah, JRPGLand has definately progressed. All of the little kingdoms have inexplitably combined into one big kingdom.

Corporate_Jew_Master · Jan 18, 2016

Lereftain sounds like a painkiller brand.

Alex Heartnet · Jan 18, 2016

Corporate_Jew_Master said:
Lereftain sounds like a painkiller brand.

Can't have the serfs complain about how miserable their daily lives are, after all. They should be passively working the fields and factories instead of complaining.

Judging from the nation's heraldry it is perhaps for the best that modern medicine is not a thing yet

Alex Heartnet · Jan 20, 2016

Current Music: 3. A Lost Dream

Our tale begins with a lone traveler wanderin

That is the creepiest sign I don't even WHY IS THIS HERE

No, the stagecoach was not an option because you are only a level 1 character. You are supposed to get out there and start earning xp

Current Music: 4: It Begins

Blood? Where? I don't see any.

...Naturally different characters react very differently to this event. None of them react the same way I would.

Could you goons of picked a less annoying character to listen to? :argh:

Yesyes go to the village to find someone else to talk to so I don't have to listen to your annoying monlogue anymore

Alex Heartnet · Jan 21, 2016

Current Music: 4. Transcending People

Yes, that is indeed a giant caterpillar with a house on its back.

Our second party member! Good! I hope she starts arguing with
Mericious so I don't have to listen to any more monologues

wua? You just contradicted yourself mayor.
If you didn't think your town could defend itself, then why would you take the risk of sending out search parties?

Be a hero! You can do it!

It'll only involve a bit of hardship and danger. Okay, maybe more then a bit... it'll make military service look like an easy life...

JRPGLand should of remained polytheistic :argh:

Nothing like a nice guilt trip to get heroes motivated no matter how relunctant
:smug:

...Annddd Charlotte quickly runs off so far ahead of Mericious that I fail to get a proper screenshot of it. It seems at least one party member is eager.

Well I guess it is off to farm rats to buy time for the villagers to slowly make their escape on their house-caterpillars or something

But seriously, those houses...
:4/5:

Erebus · Jan 21, 2016

I like the crazy architecture, it's fun.

From what I understand, Character One, Two and Three each have a specific personality. One will be rather cynical and selfish (well, more selfish than the usual jRPG hero, anyway), Two will be eager and idealistic, Three will be wise and experienced.

lightbane · Jan 21, 2016

It's atypical but fun to see a Christian priest behave like a proper clergyman for once. :incline:

Of course, he probably knows several divine magic spells that let him flay alive his enemies (and if he doesn't yet, he'll do so in the future).

Alex Heartnet · Jan 22, 2016

Erebus said:
Two will be eager and idealistic

Not a logical thinker, are you Charlotte?

Wow Charlotte, really? You actually said that?

You know you are talking to an arrogant prick when they include their middle name when they introduce themselves. :obviously:

I can't find the emote for eating popcorn. Could someone pass it to me?

Someone forgot to pay the bar tab?

Yep, this is a Catholic priest alright :smug:

Erebus said:
One will be rather cynical and selfish

You called it. Good job.

And 10,000 words of dialogue later the game FINALLY lets us control the game. We can move around now yay!

Next Episode:

Alex Heartnet · Jan 26, 2016

Current Music: 6. Finding Our Strength

This game is notoriously linear. There is almost no exploration whatsoever. You take a few steps to the right and a pre-defined battle happens. Then a few more steps and another pre-defined battle and another...

Our first fight is against a group of flowers that don't hit back. Don't worry, our foes will become terrifyingly difficult later on.

I completely failed to get a screenshot of this because the animation is only a few frames long, but Charlotte insists on taking off her leather jacket and tossing it offscreen when the fight begins. Presumably it is limiting her max DEX score or something.

Combat is very roughly the same as in every other JRPG. All combatants have an energy meter. When it fills up they will use the chosen abilit

Is that a bullet casing I see?

Wow, apparently this world managed to skip muzzleloaders entirely

I killed a flower! How sad

It'll get back up in 25 seconds at partial HP. All monsters do. To win a fight, all your enemies must be KOed at the same time.

This applies to your party as well.

But the results of a fight where the opponent does not hit back is... predictable.

Current Music: 7. On Our Way

There is only one direction we can head currently and as always:

And I do believe our party is complete.

Grace must be famous indeed for even Mericious to recognize her.

Yep, in case the multicolored forest and masked assassins and walking villages didn't make it clear enough, this is indeed still JRPGLand.

That thing just kidnapped a kid.

It's not just a normal tentacle monster. It's a pedophile tentacle monster!

:argh:

lightbane · Jan 26, 2016

Tentacle monsters don't care about silly concepts like "age", as long as their victims are female (or not, your pics are a bit small and the kid is quite ugly, so it's hard to tell).

:mhd:

Is that a halo? Can Meridian spontaneously summon these at will? Also, can you provide a minimal explanation about the characters' abilities in combat at some point, please? Just for curiosity.

Alex Heartnet · Jan 27, 2016

lightbane said:
Tentacle monsters don't care about silly concepts like "age", as long as their victims are female (or not, your pics are a bit small and the kid is quite ugly, so it's hard to tell).

There is no higher screen resolution. But if you want I can increase the size of the screenshots by 50%.

lightbane said:
Is that a halo? Can Meridian spontaneously summon these at will?

Yes and yes. As a Catholic priest he is indeed holier then thou are.

lightbane said:
Also, can you provide a minimal explanation about the characters' abilities in combat at some point, please? Just for curiosity.

I'll get to that in the next two posts. The game won't let me show/assign skill points until I actually level up, which will happen pretty quick.

Edit: Here, have a preview:

lightbane · Jan 27, 2016

Alex Heartnet said:
There is no higher screen resolution. But if you want I can increase the size of the screenshots by 50%.

Yeah, I would like that, indeed. You already post the images inside spoilers so there isn't any risk of overloading the page with too many pics, so it's okay.

Alex Heartnet · Jan 28, 2016

Music: 8. Confrontation at the Shrine

Before the battle begins proper, let's look at our foe's strengths and weaknesses.

As a Lrg creature, it is vulnerable to any attack that has a bonus against Lrg enemies. Any given monster will either have a 0% dodge chance or a high% dodge chance. This is the former, so if I were to build up a major attack I won't have to worry about it missing.

As for the other damage types, I am not sure if those are supposed to be positive or negative numbers? Hopefully we'll find out as the game continues.

The 146% under the monster is its current damage reduction. It spikes upwards whenever a given combatant gets hit with an attack, then quickly falls back down to 100%. I should probably stagger my attacks accordingly.

By clicking on a character you can bring up a wheel that lists what attacks they know. For example, Charlotte can load her weapon with imps rather then bullets in a futile attempt to block the tentacle monster's attacks. I think it might of deflected an entire attack before vanishing. I hope her powder imps get better later on.

The words below the attack wheel are combos, which I will cover in a later update.

All attacks carry the same cost - which is none. There is no magic meter or anything here. Regardless, Mericious does not have any abilities specifically meant to deal with Lrg enemies, so I just have him use his staff instead.

Both Grace and Charlotte know Aimed Shot in case they run into a lone large foe. Unfortunately, we are fighting a Lrg monster instead of a large monster, but it'll have to do.

I'll go into more detail on character skills once we reach a savepoint.

As you might expect from a tentacle monster, the creature attacks by picking up large rocks and tossing them at whoever is currently in the front of the group...

...However, by virtue of being a Catholic preacher Mericious is well-trained in the art of using chi to deflect piercing and concussive attacks. Any physical damage (not magical!) he takes will come out of the green number before the red one. In addition, the green number slowly increases upwards over time, unlike the red number.

I had to shuffle around the party formation to spread the damage around, but it was only a matter of time before the creature is slain.

lightbane · Jan 28, 2016

Alex Heartnet said:
...However, by virtue of being a Catholic preacher Mericious is well-trained in the art of using chi to deflect piercing and concussive attacks.

There's something really wrong in this sentence. It seems each character does have unique dialoguie, but besides that they're palette swaps of fixed classes. Does Meridious at least have more "Christian inspired" skills not shown here such as resurrecting fallen party members, sacrificing himself to cure his comrades, throw cross-like energy beams and perhaps even turn his enemies into salt?

Alex Heartnet · Jan 28, 2016

lightbane said:
There's something really wrong in this sentence. It seems each character does have unique dialoguie, but besides that they're palette swaps of fixed classes.

None of them are palette swaps per say, but their skill set is similar. And by "similar" I mean "Aimed shot is the only attack that both Grace and Charlotte share". I'll eventually be re-doing the first chapter with a different cast just to explore those differences.

Yes, Mericious' abilities are similar to PyanPal and Enshadu's abilities. I said that specifically to mock the fact.

lightbane said:
Does Meridious at least have more "Christian inspired" skills not shown here such as resurrecting fallen party members, sacrificing himself to cure his comrades, throw cross-like energy beams and perhaps even turn his enemies into salt?

No, most of those are about helping people, and Mericious is not too fond of helping people. He has no healing or anything. He can bestow blessings on other people, but that's it. More christian inspired skills would indeed be nice.

But for what it's worth he can Damn his foes with an appropriate debuff. I assume that he is the sort of preacher who thinks that almost everyone is going to hell and should be sentenced to such before they die rather then after.

You lot are very eager to see exactly what skills each character has, but at least let me reach a savepoint ugh

Alex Heartnet · Jan 29, 2016

Current Music: 9. Misty Hollows

lightbane said:
(...and the kid is quite ugly, so it's hard to tell...)

...This would be why. That is a... very questionable choice of outfit. Is that's a boy's haircut?! Guessing from the outfit and haircut I can only assume that it is supposed to be some school uniform, but if that was my kid there is no way I would force her to wear that.

She would probably look just fine with a more normal dress and haircut?

Okay, I guess that actually is a dress. But geez, that is a horrible choice of what kind of stockings and shoes are those?! WHO TORTURES A KID LIKE THIS!?! :argh:

I would a joke about how the man probably didn't fight at all, but that is too distasteful even for me.

Well don't let it live to molest little girls later on! Finish it off! Toss a cauldron of boiling oil or something down there! Then light a cask of gunpowder and toss that down as well!

Well this is all great and all but will the game actually let me save so I can end this recording session

That is a very ominous place to save my game, but it'll have to do. But I can't help but feel I might of seen this symbol somewhere else?

Oh, right, the coat of arms.

Next episode is the one that changes everything, the one that all of you have been yelling at me to show!

Alex Heartnet · Jan 30, 2016

Fine, fine. I'll show you the character sheets. Impatient Codexians...

Every character has a passive skill that increases their hitpoints, a class-specific passive, a basic attack shared by everyone with that class, and a handful of attacks that are different foe each character.

The class passive for the priest is Chosen. Since chi does not absorb magical or etheral damage, this presumably is meant to shore up this weakness.

Know what else helps protect against magical damage? Having more hitpoints. I'll get preference to investing in Fortitude first.

Perhaps unsuprisingly, the basic attack that everyone can do with a staff involves bludgeoning foes with such.

This might actually be the only close combat ability in our party. Such abilities involve the user rushing ahead of the party to attack, putting them in front of whoever is normally at the front of the formation for a moment.

Blessing is definitely not my go-to skill, but it might see some use.

There is probably a use for this somewhere, but at first glance Damn looks like a very subpar skill :decline:

Wrath is more or less the same as Strike, but with a different damage type.

Mericious' skillset seems to be lacking some things that one would expect him to have. Oh well I will make do without

Grace and Charlotte share Fortitude, Lucky Lady, and Aimed Shot. Fortitude is a generic HP increase so I won't bother showing it, and you've already seen Aimed Shot.

Lucky Lady is dodge chance!

:incline:

It seems that all musketeers carry a variety of ammo types, both mundane and magical. Sometimes you simply require a different damage type.

...However, the light AoE of Explosive Shell pales in comparison to Charlotte's "special" ammo...

This was a favorite of mine first playthrough, but looking closer I see it is for large crowds only and mostly for attacking the rear line.

And last but not leave there are the Powder Imps. Grace looks to have better options for defense.

It would appear that Charlotte's skillset is more AoE-focused, while Grace is focused more on defensive abilities.

Smokescreen is an ability I foolishly overlooked in my first playthrough.

Anyone else thinking what I am? :incline:

And lastly we have High Fire. It can hit any enemy regardless of where they are in the formation.

I would leave skill point distribution up for a vote, but we don't have enough skillpoints yet to bother.

Skill chains and equipment I will show later, when enemies get tougher and/or we get to the store. Suffice to say that both girls are currently using training muskets.

And last but not least, in case you forget what the plot is you can find it here...

Wow, that last one was an impressively bad piece of writing. Proper spelling and grammar should look more like this:

Any of you Codexians care to proofread Charlotte's poorly-written diary entry? Make sure to grade it as well!

In Progress High Fantasy in the Age of Gunpowder: Let's play The Spirit Engine 2

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Arcane

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