u/RainingMetal

Reached Chapter 8 (again). The available paralogues are coming in by the truckload, and there are various sidequests that require me to do other battles too! Is it typical to not be able to do all paralogues and battle sidequests in a single run? My professor level only allows me to tackle two of such battles in a given week, and that's not even getting into the Sundays that the game forces me to miss.

No spoilers, please.

What element of the game never really clicked for you whenever you played through the game?

* I never got anything from the train, let alone anything useful.

* The only bee houses I ever use are the free one from the community center bundle and the one I create for the sake of filling out the "craft everything" achievement. I'd much rather get the kegs from the reward tickets.

* I hardly use the dehydrators, despite me always picking the mushroom cave out of habit.

* I'd rather use the hot springs to get energy for free rather than ever buy anything at the medical clinic, and I already have little reason to go there because by the time it opens up, I already have Salmonberries to re-energize.

We know from the Japanese manual for Star Fox 64, and subsequently the holoviewer entries in the 2026 release, call Falco's old gang "Free as a Bird". But from Arwingpedia, they also have a different name, "The Hot Rodders". Where does the latter come from? Skimming through "Farewell, Beloved Falco" doesn't mention Falco's gang's name in any capacity (at least from the fan translations), and I can't recall seeing this particular name from the same sources as we got "Free as a Bird".

You know the story: EGS cuts a deal with a developer/publisher to keep their game off of Steam's storefront for a given period of time in exchange for giving them a sum of money, or to give them a better cut of their games' sales compared to Steam.

What I'm after is how often did developers/publishers actually need the money to fund their game, lest their game not be released at all? I'm debating with someone as to how credible this story was over the history of the EGS exclusivity deals being made. Was the money fronted by EGS absolutely critical in funding the development and release of the game? Was it more just a safety net post-release to pay off the employees who helped create the game? When was it just a dirty, unfortunate bribe?

I'd like to see articles to help verify all these kinds of viewpoints. Note that I'd prefer to see articles describing how people justified in accepting these deals at the time, rather than explanations in hindsight. I personally doubt we'd be seeing optimistic justifications looking back.

If Estelle Ellis, Alesia Glidewell, and Aya Hara were, for some reason, unable to reprise their roles should Krystal appear in a new game, who would you envision her new VA to be?

I'd nominate Carina Reeves. She plays Fiora in Xenoblade 1's English dub. Like Krystal, Fiora speaks with an Estuary accent.

If you have played any of the Star Fox games with Krystal in them (Star Fox Adventures, Assault, Command), how did you come across playing those games for the first time?

My first exposure to Star Fox as a whole was from the SNES game; we owned an SNES with just four games (Super Mario All-Stars, Super Mario World, Super Mario Kart, and Star Fox). I wasn't very good at Star Fox back then, as my earliest memories of playing on the SNES was when I was five. We never got an N64 when I was growing up (chalk it up to prudish parents or something), so our next console was the Nintendo Gamecube. So you can imagine how I felt when I saw Star Fox Adventures on the store shelves.

Needless to say, I was taken aback by how different this game was different from the Star Fox that I was familiar with. Keep in mind that I never played Star Fox 64 either, but even then, there was something off about the prologue. Being around only ten or so by the game's release, I had trouble getting through the prologue with Krystal, given that she loses her staff and the brain squids in Krazoa Palace respawn. Looking back at it now, they looked scarier than they actually were, given that their attacks only take out a sliver of your health. I never actually beat the game back then, as the second phase of the Galdon fight stumped me and I couldn't figure out how to get past it without a magazine guide (the Nintendo Power guide). But even with the magazine guide, I guess I wasn't that interested in the game at the time as I stopped playing around the middle of the CloudRunner Fortress arc (our parents enforcing a strict play time limit didn't help). Like the fool I was back then we sold our copy of the game (and we had also sold our SNES; my dad's an anti-hoarder). But I still held onto that Nintendo Power guide and read through it despite no longer having the game.

Over a decade later, I saw that my friend (who brought over video games for people to play as part of a social gathering) had a copy of Star Fox Adventures. I asked if I could borrow it and he obliged. That was when I completed the game properly for the first time. I had no idea that Krystal spoke (in what I call Lylat Basic) in a British accent, given that we only ever heard her speak Saurian in the prologue and in Moon Mountain Pass. I would later ask if I could borrow his copy of Star Fox Assault to continue this arc, and I finished that too. I would later buy used copies of these two games, and I still have them and the magazine guide to this day.

Given the subject of this sub, I imagine there's plenty of fanmade stories hoping to remedy the unfortunate shortage of official characterization and representation of Krystal from Star Fox (not helped by the franchise storyline returning to the Lylat Wars again and again for the past two decades). One of the first (serious) fanfictions that I got into was "Star Fox: The Saurian Adventure", in which the events of Star Fox Adventures were tweaked to have Krystal tag along Fox & Tricky rather than being trapped at Krazoa Palace. The author had ceased production around 2009, and another author wanted to finish what was started with a continuation story. It too is yet to be finished, although at least its latest chapter was uploaded around early this year.

Having read them and other such stories, I decided to write up my own from start to finish. I named it "Chronicles of Sauria".

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/14448734/1/Star-Fox-Adventures-Chronicles-of-Sauria

https://archiveofourown.org/works/63600349/chapters/163004611

I'm also part of a Discord server, all about Star Fox fanfiction. There's plenty more Krystal stories shared there too.

What order do you tend to do each character's final chapter and final boss? I tend to go after Hikari's first, simply to unlock Ku city at long last, as well as the boss that holds a secret class there. Ochette's would probably be second, as her final boss can seriously turn the power of an overleveled protagonist against you (doubly so if the form of her boss corresponds to your character's preferred attack stats). Throne might be third for me to unlock Lostseed, although it's nowhere near as important as Ku.

If I had a choice, I'd probably have a better time saving Castti's and Agnea's finales later than sooner due to how problematic it can be to do them sooner when the party's weaker. I tend to do Temenos' finale last simply because he's always the last party member of the eight I come across (I've always started with a protagonist who starts in the western continent).

...he's kneeling, right? The art style makes it somewhat difficult to tell if he's taking a knee given that his sprite doesn't seem to lower that much. It looks like he's just crossing his legs.

Upon selecting which stat you want a minor boost in after the Wishvale prologue, the game shows three figures. Wealth is obviously Herminia, and it appears that Fame is El the Swordsman. But who's in the middle? It doesn't look quite like Tytos, as the figure had a beard. Is it a young King Pardis?

Consistently, every Xenoblade game had its protagonist be the subject of some kind of resurrection at the start of their stories.

* Xenoblade 1: Shulk was originally dead when he was found by Dickson at Harict Chapel. It was Zanza's life force that powered Shulk from that point, until he reemerged in Mechonis Core.

* Xenoblade 2: Rex gets killed by Jin in the Ancient Tornan Vessel in Chapter 1, and gets revived by Pyra sharing her core crystal with him.

* Xenoblade 3: Noah (and countless other Kevesi & Agnian soldiers) were the subject of getting killed by war or the 10-year cycle for the soldier clones, and got revived in the soldier pods, though strangely Noah came back despite presumably perishing from the 10-year cycle expiration at least once (and that's without the existence of Consul N further complicating things).

* Xenoblade X: Every original human body was destroyed along with the Earth; every mim that made it to Mira wasn't being controlled by their original human bodies.

I wouldn't be surprised if Eleanor also got struck with a brush with the reaper and came back somehow.

Given that "A Step Ahead" gives that character a turn before the start of the battle, does it cancel out the benefits of "Heightened Senses" (Gain an increased chance to act first in battle)? Or does "A Step Ahead" act independently of getting the jump on a random encounter as normal?

What continent do you prefer to start out on? Do you start off with the eastern half (Throne, Ochette, Osvald, Temenos) or the western one (Castti, Hikari, Agnea, Partitio)?

I'm a CHAP all the way. First playthrough was with Partitio, the second with Hikari, my third one will be with Castti.

In Octopath Traveler 1, you can only use monsters that you've collected when fighting someone via Provoke, whose uses are limited, the stronger monsters are much harder to catch, and should you lose or forfeit the fight, your reputation goes down. At least with Challenging people, you still use your character's usual fighting skills and you only suffer the damage that you've taken should you lose or forfeit. The only instance of me using Provoke was on a person whose minimum Challenge level was much higher than their actual difficulty, which is a rarity given that those two are often proportionately consistent.

In Octopath Traveler 2, if I wanted someone out of the way, I'd just use Throne's ambush instead, and if I wanted to fight someone the traditional way, it would be for getting a combat ability for Hikari, or very rarely the times when I would rob someone with Osvald if I couldn't get their items from Agnea's or Throne's abilities reliably, so I never used Ochette's Provoke ability either (despite her monster summons being unlimited in the long term).

I may have realized way too late that Pomegranates and Essence of Pomegranates can't be bought at stores. Which is a shame because I've been using them a lot with Alfyn for the various Chapter 4 boss fights. Still got half of them to go, including Alfyn's and H'aanit's, which I've heard are truly nasty encounters that will likely need Alfyn's abilities. Once more I'm truly missing the benefits of Castti's Latent Power.

About to wrap up the last of the Chapter 3s, and will soon be on the way to finishing up each character's story. In terms of difficulty and endgame benefits, which characters' finales should I focus on tackling first? For reference, Therion is my main (thank you very much, purple chests /s). For the sake of getting a follower who can buff the whole party in both offense and defense, I suspect I may be encouraged to go for Ophelia's or Ha'anit's finale first.

This is my first playthrough, so no spoilers if possible!

Was Riki voiced by Wayne Forester/Yuki Kaida in Xenoblade 2's Land of Challenge? I remember reading that Tatsu's VA in English was voiced by someone else, but Riki sounds just like he did in the original Xenoblade 1.

Having played Octopath Traveler 2 before 1, I distinctly remember Castti's concoct ability neatly sorting out healing ingredients from harmful ingredients, depending on what you wanted to do with them. Alfyn works differently here; given that you need to select a seed or dust to determine which target you wish to use your herbs on, but the healing ingredients aren't separated from the harmful ones. What happens when you use healing seeds/dust with harmful herbs, or harmful seeds/dust with healing herbs? Will the enemy get healed? Will your team take various debuffs?