Suikoden V play through natterings

[auronlu]

I'm still quietly puttering my way through Suikoden V, enjoying all the little detours and side quests.

I just caught up with the improbable bandit. It would've made more sense to me-- and I was expecting-- the imposter to be that foppish young rival Euram, but I guess he's not competent enough to pull it off. 

Lucretia's reaction to that entire episode is amusingly innocent. "Imposter? Isn't that word exciting? Or is it just me?" is a bit of secret optional dialog if you go back to talk to her after a cutscene. Which makes me say "uh, oh," even more than when Sialeeds is building up a head of steam. I imagine Lucretia murmuring the line with feigned innocence while twirling a chess piece absently with her fingers.

I feel like Lucretia is a mastermind cat sending the Prince out to fetch her mice to play with. Except this is a cat from the old "if cats had thumbs" cartoon, so she doesn't just play with her toys; she finds interesting new uses for them. I wonder what she'll do with this one. (And why on earth did I just get the mental image of Adam Savage and Lucretia Merces teaming up to plot world domination, with Adam as Pinky and Lucretia as Brain? Clearly, it's time for bed).

Other impressions:

 I utterly ADORE Lyon, of course, because I love the Utena archetype but for once don't have to feel guilty about how the knight-in-shining-armor-overprotective-big-sister archetype usually needs a complementary distressed damsel. In this case, subverted! 

I love the whole Raftfleet contingent and tend to go off adventuring with them. A sturdy peasant woman wielding a mooring cable, Ward and his anchor (whoops, wrong game), and two teenaged girls having friendly Best Enemies rivalry with harpoons is not a typical RPGS party. 

I keep wanting to take everybody and go rescue Sialeed's cousin, the oracle, but the game won't let me. Wah. (ack, I've forgotten her name. Silver braids. Offered to make the prince a mug of warm milk. Looked like the sort of person to keep bees.)

When asked to choose a name for the army, all the options NPCS suggest have apostrophes in them, but the dialog box does NOT. So I wound up calling it Queen Lyms Army. This is amusing when the bad guys who are trying to install Lym as a puppet queen call us the rebel army. 

I hope the story doesn't end with a marriage of convenience between the two children of the rival houses fighting over the throne. That would solve the political mess, mostly, but it would be rum luck for the young lady. 

(why is it that posts I make on the iPad seem so scatterbrained? It's odd how the medium impacts writing style. I am almost tempted to switch to handwriting recognition and see if I write differently with a stylus, except that my handwriting has deteriorated so much that I doubt even artificial intelligence could make it intelligible.)

Comments

[heavenscalyx]

Our theory about the bandit lookalike, given some of the crumbs dropped in dialogue, is that bandit is an illegitimate by-blow of Royal Dad's on one of his trips around the queendom to put down rebellion, etc. We LOVED the meeting-the-bandit cutscene. It was SO fanficcy.

Adore the Lucretia. Lucretia is made of awesome. I have a lemony fanfic you can read about Lucretia after you finish.

[akycha]

I think he's older than Hero, he's from just before dad won the Games. I would rather think that Dad and Mom were totes in love with each other, and Dad knew better than to undermine Mom's political clout by running around on a woman who could order him put to death for that sort of thing.

[akycha]

P.S. Just a hint, don't let Big Brother do anything stupid once you've recruited him.

[heavenscalyx]

Oh, that's right! The timing worked out and stuff. I'd forgotten.

Gosh, maybe we need to replay the game.

[auronlu]

This makes perfect sense! And yes, he is very fanficcy.

P.s. that Prince icon of HC's = win.

[auronlu]

I will look forward to that.

(speaking of Lucretia and lemonfic,I wish she would stop hauling off Lelei somewhere for a "strategy session" every time I head into hostile territory. I turned Lelei into a tank of flying death when they first joined up, and I feel irrationally that when I'm heading into a place where one wrong move could land us in alligators, I'd rather have her as my point than Kyle or unpredictable mercenaries. Kisara's great, but she's more like a cleric than a cavalier; sometimes I need someone who can take and deal more damage.)

[akycha]

Have you got your hot tub yet? Be sure to take LOTS of different groups of people into the hot tub, some of the conversations are... enlightening!

[auronlu]

Not yet, but I've been filling up my storeroom with piles and piles of rubber duckies, just in case. That room of the castle must smell very odd; it's full of oiled leather and used armor, "marbled beef", octopus parts and bath salts.

I hope Chuck has the sense to store all the spices and foodstuffs I keep stocking for trade the other side of the room.