It occurs to me that the Resurrection of the Dark Dragon additions are probably mostly correct. The two pods in Metapha with the "After 1000 years, two heroes will appear" sign beside them in the original does align with that WTF hibernation scene in the remake.

There is no excuse for the satellite-magic explanation, though. -_______- And they missed a brilliant opportunity to have the Supernova spell linked to the Chaos Breaker rather than having it be one of Max's spells. It would make perfect sense! I mean, that would go a long way towards explaining why the Chaos Breaker was so important... 'Yes, it's an awesome sword, but more importantly, it lets you call down orbital strikes as well. And you thought Low-Orbit Ion Cannon spam was just Anonymous's favorite method of DDoSing, didn't you?'

(A funny note for the slashers on my f-list: Max and a certain someone are brothers. This fact was inexplicably left out of the U.S. version, though it was restored in RotDD. It's obvious if you know what's going on, mind. However... if you didn't... *cough* )

That aside, the swerve from medieval fantasy to science-fiction (+ fantasy) was awesome, and flawlessly pulled off. ...My favorite novel is Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light, so I may be biased, of course. As for the part that symbolized that melding best, I think it was the Colossus boss - the magic-casting head of the stone behemoth that had eroded away over the centuries to reveal the wires and status-lights beneath. The robot enemies were one thing, but the failed attempt at disguise just drove home that the Ancients had known the world would backslide into ignorance and darkness after their time, and had hidden their mechanical guardian appropriately. ...And that their mighty works had not quite stood the test of time...

On that subject, that's probably why Adam is a horrible unit, too. He was likely meant to be at the level of his promoted form (which is, by all accounts, actually decent), but had parts fall away over a thousand years until he could be beaten up by magic students with reasonably sturdy staves (which is what his initial stats literally indicate). ...I'm beginning to understand why people praise leaving world-building ambiguous. There is so much retrospective brilliance in this game, but the RotDD explanations were... far too heavy-handed. It's a pity. A few hours after beating it, I literally found a fanfiction that handled the technological elements better. (Wasn't perfect, but it didn't consider the readers as dumb as balls of wax...)


Anyway, I'll probably replay Shining Force. With a different team, mind. I want to try more magic-users this time. :) And level up my hero earlier, for the love of gad! Should be fun!

...Please tell me this isn't going faster with only-mages (+ hero). That would be embarrassing.

On the bright side, Tao's already learned Blaze 2, and I only just beat the second battle! Having to restart the first one ~3 times to level up was justified. :D;;

Named my hero Kalkin for the Lord of Light reference, on account of how "Great-Souled Sam" didn't fit in eight-characters-or-less. (Alas, he doesn't possess the power of electrodirection - if he did, the Ramladu battle would take about 90 seconds.)

My party will be:
Max, Lowe, Tao, Gong, Khris (****!!!), Anri, Arthur (❤), Domingo(♡♡♡), Alef, Torasu, Bleu, and Adam. Yes, Adam is slightly fudging the 'magic' part, but I don't want to tolerate Hanzou in my party ever again. For a level-10 effectively-promoted character to be less useful than a level-15 unpromoted is an atrocity.

...Hey, at least I'll never do without healing. :D;;

Urgently need to update The Hand once the semester is over. Ooh dear, looks like I have people awaiting updates. D: On the bright side, I do have over 1K of the next chapter written... I just need time. About 10 hours worth of it, since I am a complete slowpoke and have a maximum writing speed of 1K per hour...

Also need to spork - yes, I know I am terminally overdue on sporkings. It's not that I'm forgetting fandom, it's that I haven't been doing much, period. ...Well, you guys probably guessed that from my mentions of looking up ADHD coping tools and newfound love for Habit RPG. And my distinct wonkiness in forgetting to answer comments - I'm sorry for that, and I'll try to get to them eventually.

And I need to urgently get school things done, and all that good stuff. I'd try to say more, but I'm working on stopping my emotional-windups before they start.

...I think beating Shining Force was good for me. Silly as it sounds, I've just been looking for signs that things I've enjoyed are still there. ...This hasn't been a bad year like 2012 (THANK THE HEAVENS, AND AMEN), but it's been in a sort of fog of translucent neutrality. Time to tank up on the coffee and forge onward into the fog.

(Don't mind this post. *insert "LiveJournal: Because Everyone Wants To Hear About Your Cat" icon here*)

Not that it really matters, but... uh, guys? I am QUITE certain I last made progress on the Python track less than 24 days ago.

Bah. I think I'm beginning to understand how the LiveJournal old-timers feel about nonsensical changes that make things worse, but fortunately I'm into this site for the content, not the presentation.

--

In unrelated news, I am getting highly tempted to create a Mad Libs program to write fellowship essays. I mean, I'd drive myself mad doing the JQuery for each little possibility, but it would be less tedious than writing the actual essay...
'In summary, your honor, I sparkle in the sunlight and ejaculate rainbows. Give me a splendiferous amount of money with which I may fund my exploration of hugging bunnies, tiptoeing through the tulips, and painting with all the colors of the wind.'
Well, not really, but you know the feeling...