Shouta
Member
I recently was able to play and finish Growlanser Generations courtesy of Vic Ireland who loaned me a system and the discs to play it. I said in a previous thread that I would be posting one about Generations and thus here we are. I'm writing this post with the assumption that you know what Growlanser is and how the battle system is setup. If you don't, you can refer to my previous thread here: http://forums.gaming-age.com/showthread.php?t=16749
With that said and done, I'll move on to Growlanser Generations.
Growlanser Generations is a compilation of Growlanser II and III for the Playstation 2. Both games were released in 2001 roughly 4-5 months between each other. Both games went on to be on Atlus' Best Collection list and released as budget priced games.
The games in Growlanser Generations, being released fairly closely, pretty much have identical graphics. They both use 2D sprites on top of pre-rendered graphics primarily. Both games don't look too bad but in all honesty, they're not heavy hitters in the graphics department. They're quaint in terms of graphics just like the original Growlanser. However, there is one difference and that Growlanser uses CG for the bigger attacks in the game. You activate the spell and the CG starts. After a certain point the CG cuts off to in-game special effects of the spell. That's about as fancy as you get for the game.
As I mentioned previously, Growlanser games are heavy in voice-acting and Growlanser II/III are no different. By all reports from Vic, this was their biggest recording job yet and they had run out of people to do voice-acting where they're based and had to go out to some agencies to find extra folks to help out. Sort of an interesting tidbit I had to share. At any rate, most of the VAing in the game is good. I think there are a few actors here and there that I didn't like but those were primarily in supporting roles. There are instances where the VAing is a bit choppy when saying the lines but this is more so in Growlanser II than in Growlanser III. There was one niggling issue I had with Growlanser II and that was with some inconsistency in the recording of the VAs. There are certain voices and certain clips where there's a discernable difference between recording quality and audible level. It's not a big difference but it's enough that it had bothered me while I was playing the game a little. However, I don't think many people will notice at all. I think the only reason I really noticed was because I had come off Growlanser I and I've been into anime (dubbed and subbed) and videogames with VAing for so long. Anyway, between the two games, Growlanser is a MUCH better VA job Growlanser III had some great VAing especially by whoever was Hugh (I can't remember his name >_<). That was an absolutely fantastic VA job and easily the best I've heard from a single person in all my years of dubbed anime and videogames. As a whole, Generations has WD's best voice-acting however, it falls a tad short compared to Shadow Hearts: Covenant but better than La Pucelle and Disgaea, in my opinion.
The other area in audio that I'll mention is the soundtrack. It works very well in both games and while they aren't mind-blowing they are quite nice. The soundtrack he included for me to test out is good as well but I eventually found that it didn't work quite as well for me outside of the game than it did during it. The game's soundtrack is considerably better than the original Growlanser's though.
I'll begin with Growlanser II and then move on to Growlanser III after this point so I can point out the individual differences more clearly.
Growlanser II
In Growlanser II, CareerSoft changed a number of components to the combat system. Gone are standard equipment such as armor and weapons. It's replaced by the Ring Weapon System. Ring Weapons are used by warriors with exceptional skills. They respond to the user's innate abilities and create a weapon that's tuned specifically to that person. As a system in the game, characters are allowed to use one Ring Weapon at any given time and they can only be changed at Ring Artisans. These Ring Weapons give the characters enhanced stats which differ from ring to ring. These Ring Weapons also give the users the ability to equip 3 Gems with a variety of abilities. However, the rings have a power-level associated with the 3 slots ranging from 0-9. Gems have different levels and you can only equip a gem if the corresponding ring slot is of equal level or higher. So, in order to use stronger Gems, you need to seek out stronger Ring Weapons. However, Ring Weapons aren't bought in the game. They're only gained by killing foes in battle within a specific time limit. Simply killing foes within a specific time limit isn't enough to get strong rings though, you have to defeat enemies stronger than your characters to generate more powerful rings (more powerful rings for the proportionate amount of danger makes sense no?). The Gems abilities range from giving your attacks elemental damage to multiple attacks to making your spells more powerful and etc. The Ring Weapons and Gems together make for some pretty good customization. I think there are a few improvements that they could use in this area but that's for another time and post.
Alongside the addition of the Ring Weapon and Gem stuff, they change how magic worked. Magic casts the same as in Growlanser but in Growlanser II you now have levels of magic. You can charge the magic to a maximum of 9 levels. When you want to cast the magic, you're allowed to adjust the magic to how you want to cast it. For some spells, you can distribute each level on any enemy you like (like 9 level 1 spells on 9 enemies or 1 level 9 spell on 1 enemy and etc). Some other spells allow you to control the power and range of it (these are the spells that appeared in Growlanser). The higher you charge a spell the more MP and CT (wait time) you save overall. This change also affected status and cure magic as well. This change is actually a fairly good. It allows the player to control who and how much magic they use to a more careful degree rather than it having a static effect like in most games. My biggest complaint is the general lack of new magic to use in battle. We have the staples of the series and a few lower level ones that do damage but nothing new that you can use to setup different strategies on the battlefield. There's the Capacitor spells that you can use in the game but generally they only last like two hits no matter what range or power you set and they take a long time to cast making it near useless. They have abilities in the game that could setup some incredibly interesting strategies if they had magic to compliment them.
Growlanser II also added usable skills (on command) to each character that they can learn. These skills have limited usages before you need to rest. They range from abilities like Dash (increases MOV), to upping elemental defense to Bait which causes enemies to focus on the character that used the ability. This addition is very much welcomed because the major melee characters in Growlanser were limited in what they could do and pretty much were straight up skull bashers. While they pool of skills you can get are still somewhat limited, you can at the least use the melee characters more than just being bruisers.
The each event battle is also considered a mission. There are three outcomes to them; Mission Complete, Mission Clear, and Mission Failed. Mission Complete is only achieved if you hit all the objectives in the battle and, I think, if you keep all your characters alive. Mission Clear is for missions where you meet most of your win conditions but miss out in a few or have characters that remained dead in a battle. Mission Failed is exactly as it sounds. However, failing a mission isn't necessarily a ticket to game over. If you fail to meet the objective of the battle, but don't meet a losing condition, you can get a mission failed. I'm not sure of the full effect of these but I do know that one of branches in Growlanser II is dependent on how many of each one you get.
These are the biggest changes to combat component of Growlanser II. There are several minor changes but those don't have that big of impact on the game.
Outside of battle, Growlanser II uses a map point to map point system rather than the map system from Growlanser. To be honest, this was a bit jarring at first. There isn't a single bit of "nook and cranny" exploration in the game. This is blessing and curse at the same time. Rather than having to run everywhere and searching all kinds of places for the next area to go through, you can just click on the next point and be there in seconds. This map system also facilitates the branching scenario found in the game. It makes it much easier to nab events that change the outcome without needing to backtrack so much. However, at the same time, unlocking events or getting certain characters can be tedious because you would need to check every spot after every event to see if you hit certain events correctly.
The character/relationship building events in the game appear all over the place now as opposed to be directly tied to an in-game event (vacations for Growlanser). This change was actually fairly nice because it didn't concentrate into a limited timeframe and allowed for more events to occur. As I pointed out above though, you have to be meticulous with your searching to find events otherwise you can easily miss an entire series if you miss a specific event in a certain timeframe. Aside from that complaint (which really is me being rushed and a bit lazy =b) I like the change.
As I pointed out two paragraphs ago, Growlanser II contains a branching scenario. You have 2 major branches and quite a few sub-branches in the game. This leads to quite a bit of replay value however games with branching scenarios of this type tend to have a weak overall story. This is the case with Growlanser II. I love the fact there's quite a few branches but ultimately, the story just isn't as good as Growlanser or Growlanser III. It feels too short and constrained. The pacing of the game is just too fast so events that occur in the game don't have the brevity that it should and some of the events come out of the blue without a build-up thus lessening the impact. Granted, I haven't played the second branch that's present in the game, it doesn't alleviate the problem that is present with the scenario that I did play. The plot and story of the game is at least interesting but wasn't fleshed out enough. The theme of the game actually is handled decently however, the impact of the theme could've easily been enhanced with the story being more fleshed out.
Thankfully, the character development in the game wasn't impacted very much by the story since a lot of it is handled outside of the main storyline. I pointed out that one of the things I enjoyed most about Growlanser was the characters. Just like Growlanser, I enjoyed the cast for Growlanser II immensely. Even though I enjoyed the cast of Growlanser II, I'd say that it was mostly because the female character presence was much stronger than that of Growlanser which was very male-orientated in terms of "strong" characters. Comparing casts, the female characters of Growlanser II were designed much better in terms of both personality and body concept. Riviera and Charlone have stronger back stories which they don't fall into to the standard female anime clichés that the female cast of Growlanser was molded after. Yes, I did say that Growlanser's female characters broke out of their mold but it doesn't really compare to Growlanser II's female cast who only start as clichés in principal but quickly work around it by sheer personality. On the flipside though, Growlanser II's male cast frankly sucks compared to Growlanser. There's very little real development for the Growlanser II male cast at all and that makes them feel weak compared to the male cast of Growlanser who each were fleshed out quite a bit. However, I do think this is the reason why the male characters from Growlanser were made playable in Growlanser II and why the female characters weren't
.
I think that's about it for Growlanser II. There might be some niggling things in the back of my head but I honestly can't remember at this moment. Maybe when someone asks a question. Anyway, no to Growlanser III.
Growlanser III
Growlanser III is actually a prequel to Growlanser II and III. Set some millennia before the first two games, it shows what happened to the world that the people of Growlanser and Growlanser II space-time shifted from.
Compared to Growlanser II, Growlanser III doesn't have that many changes to the battle system. In fact, there's like three changes to the combat system. The first is a switch from 8 characters in your party in Growlanser II to 4 characters in your party for Growlanser III (for reference, Growlanser had 5 characters). The second item is the fact that you can use items in battle again (taken out of Growlanser II for some reason but it was in Growlanser). The last change is the inclusion of Cooperation magic. Cooperation magic is the result of two characters being able to combine their magical efforts together to form much stronger spells. These spells are the ones that were previously accessible to full magic-casters in Growlanser and Growlanser II. Combine with the fact that you only have 4 characters in battle, this makes for some interesting battle decisions.
Outside of combat, Growlanser III uses a standard overworld system. You walk between towns and dungeons and when you enter them, you're set into the standard view that all the events in the game occur. You move around in dungeons in this mode as well however, the dungeons in the game are randomly generated. Frankly, the randomly generated dungeons are realllllly awful. An uninteresting set of square rooms stringed together with differing enemies and loot. It just felt god awful to run through and I found myself dreading them. I ended up super-rushing most of them just to avoid being in there at any cost. There is one interesting mechanic that it did provide and that is the ability for monsters that hear the commotion of battle to join in from adjacent rooms. It's quite fun but doesn't help with the fact that the dungeons are absolutely boring.
Relationship building for the game is much more straight-forward. Actually, it does it a lot like Growlanser. At certain intervals throughout the story, you can go back to your section of the hometown which contains your base. Here, people will make a suggestion for everyone to rest and at this point you can choose to talk to your party members to further the main character's relationship with the others. There are certain events you can investigate outside of these sequences but the bulk of it is done through this and you can only get the later sequences if you participate in these. It's a nice little fusion of both the approaches found in Growlanser I and Growlanser II. I would've preferred a little more Growlanser II in this but oh well.
As for story and characters, Growlanser III is, on the whole, much better than Growlanser II. The story is cohesive and has an interesting premise (for the most part) and the characters are all quite fleshed out for both genders. One of my complaints for Growlanser III is that the story didn't last long enough to build it up. I actually enjoy the scenario and what was going on in Growlanser III but the way it worked out in the second-half unraveled all the things going on in the story too easily. I would've liked it to not have been done so easily just because it would've been really interesting given the events occurring. The other complaint for Growlanser III was that I wish there were more intercharacter bantering that didn't involve the main character. The cast for Growlanser III was just great (although one more male character in the primary cast would've been nice) and I really wanted to see them interact more like the Growlanser II cast did in their sequences.
Comparing Growlanser II and III, I enjoyed Growlanser III more than I did II overall. This has a lot to do with the story and characters which ultimately pushed the decision over the edge. Both Growlanser II and III both have excellent event battles and a ton of secrets to look out for. However, Growlanser III's better story and characters (overall) edged out the fact that I liked Growlanser II's branching scenario.
At any rate, I'm tired and being long-winded. To basically shorten everything I said above, Growlanser Generations is an excellent set of games. They have an excellent battle system and great event battles (although they could've used more and really could've gone a bit wilder with the design of the event battles). The games have strong characters but the story for the two is just not as fleshed out and somewhat poorly paced to the point that it's a bit disappointing.
I'll do additions to this post if I come across something I think I forgot to say later (for example, I'll comment on translation in another post I'll make in this thread later).
If anyone has any questions, please do ask.
*walks away and quietly dozes off*
With that said and done, I'll move on to Growlanser Generations.
Growlanser Generations is a compilation of Growlanser II and III for the Playstation 2. Both games were released in 2001 roughly 4-5 months between each other. Both games went on to be on Atlus' Best Collection list and released as budget priced games.
The games in Growlanser Generations, being released fairly closely, pretty much have identical graphics. They both use 2D sprites on top of pre-rendered graphics primarily. Both games don't look too bad but in all honesty, they're not heavy hitters in the graphics department. They're quaint in terms of graphics just like the original Growlanser. However, there is one difference and that Growlanser uses CG for the bigger attacks in the game. You activate the spell and the CG starts. After a certain point the CG cuts off to in-game special effects of the spell. That's about as fancy as you get for the game.
As I mentioned previously, Growlanser games are heavy in voice-acting and Growlanser II/III are no different. By all reports from Vic, this was their biggest recording job yet and they had run out of people to do voice-acting where they're based and had to go out to some agencies to find extra folks to help out. Sort of an interesting tidbit I had to share. At any rate, most of the VAing in the game is good. I think there are a few actors here and there that I didn't like but those were primarily in supporting roles. There are instances where the VAing is a bit choppy when saying the lines but this is more so in Growlanser II than in Growlanser III. There was one niggling issue I had with Growlanser II and that was with some inconsistency in the recording of the VAs. There are certain voices and certain clips where there's a discernable difference between recording quality and audible level. It's not a big difference but it's enough that it had bothered me while I was playing the game a little. However, I don't think many people will notice at all. I think the only reason I really noticed was because I had come off Growlanser I and I've been into anime (dubbed and subbed) and videogames with VAing for so long. Anyway, between the two games, Growlanser is a MUCH better VA job Growlanser III had some great VAing especially by whoever was Hugh (I can't remember his name >_<). That was an absolutely fantastic VA job and easily the best I've heard from a single person in all my years of dubbed anime and videogames. As a whole, Generations has WD's best voice-acting however, it falls a tad short compared to Shadow Hearts: Covenant but better than La Pucelle and Disgaea, in my opinion.
The other area in audio that I'll mention is the soundtrack. It works very well in both games and while they aren't mind-blowing they are quite nice. The soundtrack he included for me to test out is good as well but I eventually found that it didn't work quite as well for me outside of the game than it did during it. The game's soundtrack is considerably better than the original Growlanser's though.
I'll begin with Growlanser II and then move on to Growlanser III after this point so I can point out the individual differences more clearly.
Growlanser II
In Growlanser II, CareerSoft changed a number of components to the combat system. Gone are standard equipment such as armor and weapons. It's replaced by the Ring Weapon System. Ring Weapons are used by warriors with exceptional skills. They respond to the user's innate abilities and create a weapon that's tuned specifically to that person. As a system in the game, characters are allowed to use one Ring Weapon at any given time and they can only be changed at Ring Artisans. These Ring Weapons give the characters enhanced stats which differ from ring to ring. These Ring Weapons also give the users the ability to equip 3 Gems with a variety of abilities. However, the rings have a power-level associated with the 3 slots ranging from 0-9. Gems have different levels and you can only equip a gem if the corresponding ring slot is of equal level or higher. So, in order to use stronger Gems, you need to seek out stronger Ring Weapons. However, Ring Weapons aren't bought in the game. They're only gained by killing foes in battle within a specific time limit. Simply killing foes within a specific time limit isn't enough to get strong rings though, you have to defeat enemies stronger than your characters to generate more powerful rings (more powerful rings for the proportionate amount of danger makes sense no?). The Gems abilities range from giving your attacks elemental damage to multiple attacks to making your spells more powerful and etc. The Ring Weapons and Gems together make for some pretty good customization. I think there are a few improvements that they could use in this area but that's for another time and post.
Alongside the addition of the Ring Weapon and Gem stuff, they change how magic worked. Magic casts the same as in Growlanser but in Growlanser II you now have levels of magic. You can charge the magic to a maximum of 9 levels. When you want to cast the magic, you're allowed to adjust the magic to how you want to cast it. For some spells, you can distribute each level on any enemy you like (like 9 level 1 spells on 9 enemies or 1 level 9 spell on 1 enemy and etc). Some other spells allow you to control the power and range of it (these are the spells that appeared in Growlanser). The higher you charge a spell the more MP and CT (wait time) you save overall. This change also affected status and cure magic as well. This change is actually a fairly good. It allows the player to control who and how much magic they use to a more careful degree rather than it having a static effect like in most games. My biggest complaint is the general lack of new magic to use in battle. We have the staples of the series and a few lower level ones that do damage but nothing new that you can use to setup different strategies on the battlefield. There's the Capacitor spells that you can use in the game but generally they only last like two hits no matter what range or power you set and they take a long time to cast making it near useless. They have abilities in the game that could setup some incredibly interesting strategies if they had magic to compliment them.
Growlanser II also added usable skills (on command) to each character that they can learn. These skills have limited usages before you need to rest. They range from abilities like Dash (increases MOV), to upping elemental defense to Bait which causes enemies to focus on the character that used the ability. This addition is very much welcomed because the major melee characters in Growlanser were limited in what they could do and pretty much were straight up skull bashers. While they pool of skills you can get are still somewhat limited, you can at the least use the melee characters more than just being bruisers.
The each event battle is also considered a mission. There are three outcomes to them; Mission Complete, Mission Clear, and Mission Failed. Mission Complete is only achieved if you hit all the objectives in the battle and, I think, if you keep all your characters alive. Mission Clear is for missions where you meet most of your win conditions but miss out in a few or have characters that remained dead in a battle. Mission Failed is exactly as it sounds. However, failing a mission isn't necessarily a ticket to game over. If you fail to meet the objective of the battle, but don't meet a losing condition, you can get a mission failed. I'm not sure of the full effect of these but I do know that one of branches in Growlanser II is dependent on how many of each one you get.
These are the biggest changes to combat component of Growlanser II. There are several minor changes but those don't have that big of impact on the game.
Outside of battle, Growlanser II uses a map point to map point system rather than the map system from Growlanser. To be honest, this was a bit jarring at first. There isn't a single bit of "nook and cranny" exploration in the game. This is blessing and curse at the same time. Rather than having to run everywhere and searching all kinds of places for the next area to go through, you can just click on the next point and be there in seconds. This map system also facilitates the branching scenario found in the game. It makes it much easier to nab events that change the outcome without needing to backtrack so much. However, at the same time, unlocking events or getting certain characters can be tedious because you would need to check every spot after every event to see if you hit certain events correctly.
The character/relationship building events in the game appear all over the place now as opposed to be directly tied to an in-game event (vacations for Growlanser). This change was actually fairly nice because it didn't concentrate into a limited timeframe and allowed for more events to occur. As I pointed out above though, you have to be meticulous with your searching to find events otherwise you can easily miss an entire series if you miss a specific event in a certain timeframe. Aside from that complaint (which really is me being rushed and a bit lazy =b) I like the change.
As I pointed out two paragraphs ago, Growlanser II contains a branching scenario. You have 2 major branches and quite a few sub-branches in the game. This leads to quite a bit of replay value however games with branching scenarios of this type tend to have a weak overall story. This is the case with Growlanser II. I love the fact there's quite a few branches but ultimately, the story just isn't as good as Growlanser or Growlanser III. It feels too short and constrained. The pacing of the game is just too fast so events that occur in the game don't have the brevity that it should and some of the events come out of the blue without a build-up thus lessening the impact. Granted, I haven't played the second branch that's present in the game, it doesn't alleviate the problem that is present with the scenario that I did play. The plot and story of the game is at least interesting but wasn't fleshed out enough. The theme of the game actually is handled decently however, the impact of the theme could've easily been enhanced with the story being more fleshed out.
Thankfully, the character development in the game wasn't impacted very much by the story since a lot of it is handled outside of the main storyline. I pointed out that one of the things I enjoyed most about Growlanser was the characters. Just like Growlanser, I enjoyed the cast for Growlanser II immensely. Even though I enjoyed the cast of Growlanser II, I'd say that it was mostly because the female character presence was much stronger than that of Growlanser which was very male-orientated in terms of "strong" characters. Comparing casts, the female characters of Growlanser II were designed much better in terms of both personality and body concept. Riviera and Charlone have stronger back stories which they don't fall into to the standard female anime clichés that the female cast of Growlanser was molded after. Yes, I did say that Growlanser's female characters broke out of their mold but it doesn't really compare to Growlanser II's female cast who only start as clichés in principal but quickly work around it by sheer personality. On the flipside though, Growlanser II's male cast frankly sucks compared to Growlanser. There's very little real development for the Growlanser II male cast at all and that makes them feel weak compared to the male cast of Growlanser who each were fleshed out quite a bit. However, I do think this is the reason why the male characters from Growlanser were made playable in Growlanser II and why the female characters weren't
. I think that's about it for Growlanser II. There might be some niggling things in the back of my head but I honestly can't remember at this moment. Maybe when someone asks a question. Anyway, no to Growlanser III.
Growlanser III
Growlanser III is actually a prequel to Growlanser II and III. Set some millennia before the first two games, it shows what happened to the world that the people of Growlanser and Growlanser II space-time shifted from.
Compared to Growlanser II, Growlanser III doesn't have that many changes to the battle system. In fact, there's like three changes to the combat system. The first is a switch from 8 characters in your party in Growlanser II to 4 characters in your party for Growlanser III (for reference, Growlanser had 5 characters). The second item is the fact that you can use items in battle again (taken out of Growlanser II for some reason but it was in Growlanser). The last change is the inclusion of Cooperation magic. Cooperation magic is the result of two characters being able to combine their magical efforts together to form much stronger spells. These spells are the ones that were previously accessible to full magic-casters in Growlanser and Growlanser II. Combine with the fact that you only have 4 characters in battle, this makes for some interesting battle decisions.
Outside of combat, Growlanser III uses a standard overworld system. You walk between towns and dungeons and when you enter them, you're set into the standard view that all the events in the game occur. You move around in dungeons in this mode as well however, the dungeons in the game are randomly generated. Frankly, the randomly generated dungeons are realllllly awful. An uninteresting set of square rooms stringed together with differing enemies and loot. It just felt god awful to run through and I found myself dreading them. I ended up super-rushing most of them just to avoid being in there at any cost. There is one interesting mechanic that it did provide and that is the ability for monsters that hear the commotion of battle to join in from adjacent rooms. It's quite fun but doesn't help with the fact that the dungeons are absolutely boring.
Relationship building for the game is much more straight-forward. Actually, it does it a lot like Growlanser. At certain intervals throughout the story, you can go back to your section of the hometown which contains your base. Here, people will make a suggestion for everyone to rest and at this point you can choose to talk to your party members to further the main character's relationship with the others. There are certain events you can investigate outside of these sequences but the bulk of it is done through this and you can only get the later sequences if you participate in these. It's a nice little fusion of both the approaches found in Growlanser I and Growlanser II. I would've preferred a little more Growlanser II in this but oh well.
As for story and characters, Growlanser III is, on the whole, much better than Growlanser II. The story is cohesive and has an interesting premise (for the most part) and the characters are all quite fleshed out for both genders. One of my complaints for Growlanser III is that the story didn't last long enough to build it up. I actually enjoy the scenario and what was going on in Growlanser III but the way it worked out in the second-half unraveled all the things going on in the story too easily. I would've liked it to not have been done so easily just because it would've been really interesting given the events occurring. The other complaint for Growlanser III was that I wish there were more intercharacter bantering that didn't involve the main character. The cast for Growlanser III was just great (although one more male character in the primary cast would've been nice) and I really wanted to see them interact more like the Growlanser II cast did in their sequences.
Comparing Growlanser II and III, I enjoyed Growlanser III more than I did II overall. This has a lot to do with the story and characters which ultimately pushed the decision over the edge. Both Growlanser II and III both have excellent event battles and a ton of secrets to look out for. However, Growlanser III's better story and characters (overall) edged out the fact that I liked Growlanser II's branching scenario.
At any rate, I'm tired and being long-winded. To basically shorten everything I said above, Growlanser Generations is an excellent set of games. They have an excellent battle system and great event battles (although they could've used more and really could've gone a bit wilder with the design of the event battles). The games have strong characters but the story for the two is just not as fleshed out and somewhat poorly paced to the point that it's a bit disappointing.
I'll do additions to this post if I come across something I think I forgot to say later (for example, I'll comment on translation in another post I'll make in this thread later).
If anyone has any questions, please do ask.
*walks away and quietly dozes off*
