iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

It's especially grating because of how fast and loose most MTL plays with maintaining parts of the text, plus just hallucinating stuff that was never there to begin with.

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

I realized later that I have Virginia's name wrong here. But it's not really my fault because I was distracted by Maya being far more fun and interesting.

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I enjoyed it a lot! There's nothing else quite like it.

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Pharaoh, I haven't done a proper post for yet, and I haven't finished the entire campaign, but I've put in forty hours, and got sick of the bugs, so I'm considering it done for purposes of this.

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Haven't updated on where I'm at on my 12for12 in a while. Everything's been played at least a little by this point. The plan is to do Imadoki Vampire during spooky month, Dead Ball Zone and Ridge Racer R4 during November, and then Linda Cubed in December (though, I finished Scenario A already).

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

The ending is actually pretty good, setting that issue aside, but with just how long the game is, after the credits finished rolling, I was ready for it to "be over."

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I went and looked up Youtube videos later, so I could pause and read, and the Youtuber was also complaining he couldn't keep up, and advising his viewers to watch on 1.5x speed. Reading technobabble on a timer in your second language is stressful! If the natives can't do it, what hope do I have!

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Oh, right, I complained about it in the original, so I should complain about it here too, but the forced auto-progressing dialogue that goes too fast to read is an issue in this game too. It goes away (mostly) after the prologue, but comes back again in Chapter 4 to ruin some touching scenes there.

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

There's a wealth of side content, and I was considering doing the optional superboss, Ragu o Ragula, this time, but it's at the bottom of a hundred floor dungeon, and even though you can do it with encounters turned off, the ten mandatory floors of the Abyss convinced me that was not worth my time.

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

It's really easy to get ridiculous XP modifiers, and end up obscenely overlevelled. Each time a skill triggers, the bonus rate goes up 0.1. Jet had a skill that that boosted any FP he got, and it triggered every time he attacked or got hit so, uh, he got way ahead of the rest of the party.

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I was glad I played the first game before this one. It's not set in the same continuity, but the backstory's similar enough that it's like a distant sequel, and it goes heavy on the references and callbacks to elements of the first game. Knowing it wasn't necessary, but it enhanced the experience.

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Also, from the department of names that definitely did not survive localization, there's a town called Titty Twister.

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

But enough about the best character in the game. Here's Virginia in Middle Earth. There are no hobbits to be found, but there *are* orcs, who always hang out with oaks, because their names in katakana are the same.

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Through the power of being a nerd who's *really* into books, Maya also comes in magical girl and Chinese martial artist form.

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

It has them for everyone, including minor NPCs in town, but I apparently have another four of these, so oops, all Maya.

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I love the expressive character portraits the game uses in its dialogue boxes. You can get a better look at them by pressing Select to hide the text.

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

My absolute favorite, though, is Victoria's rival, Maya, the jewel obsessed wanderer who clashes with her idealism. She repeatedly manages to steal the spotlight. I, uh, I may have ended up taking more screenshots of her scenes than anything else while playing...

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

It's kind of a shame Janus doesn't stick around longer, because he's the most interesting. He's a fellow wanderer (modeled on the protagonist of WA2) who went bad after losing a member of his party, but he's a bit too rancid by the time you encounter him for redemption to be on the cards.

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

The game may suffer a bit from changing out its antagonists every chapter, but I think that it's really cool that the opening animation, which plays every time you load, has a section that also swaps them out over the course of the game.

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Played through this for my 12for12. I'd played before in English, but stalled out at the start of Chapter 4. This being my second time through most of the game, I picked up on a lot more of the final boss foreshadowing, and may have done a double take at her just walking by in the second town...

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Day 206 of posting games I own. This time, Wild Arms Advanced 3rd for Playstation 2. Four wanderers team up during a train robbery to stop the traditional-Wild-Arms-protagonist-looking jerk up on the roof from making off with a priceless artifact that may just effect the fate of the entire planet.

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

The clock's name should always be the same. Not sure if there's a check on whether you looked in the book. It also asks for your name, a thing you like, and a thing you dislike. (You have to remember these.) There's actually a pretty good guide on Gamefaqs: gamefaqs.gamespot.com/saturn/57777...

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Oh, yeah. I think I remember that bit. It's probably where you need to tell the clock its name, which involves looking it up in the book in the house. It's a gorgeous game, but even speaking the language, how to progress can be a bit nebulous at times...

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

For Saturn, I don't think I've seen you post Natasu Kaze no Shima Monogatari yet.

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

I've been wanting to pick this one up myself, and it looks like the Japanese release is similarly expensive. (That'd explain why I haven't seen it on shelves anywhere...)

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

I enjoyed my time with this one, and I'll probably dive right into the second. I kept passing up copies of the SFC one assuming it was just a port, but apparently it's not, so I'll have to pick the third game up as well some time.

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

After the end of the game, there's a secret radio play about how things might have gone if the world had been peaceful, and, uh, without going into details, maybe Kearu and Sarah both lucked out that the game went the way it did...

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

I enjoyed the overall story, and many of the little stories you get in each town. They may not have all been very fleshed out, but "little old man attacks you because he thinks you kidnapped his flying fish monster" is charming enough without backstory.

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

The high encounter rate left me constantly feeling overleveled, up until I had to grind a bit for the final dungeon, but compared to some of the other Riot stuff on PC Engine I've played, which includes the completely borked Xak 1&2, this is a competent and well put together game!

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Battles go fast, and levels come quickly, especially in the early game, which is a good thing, because the encounter rate is really high, although you do eventually get a spell to turn off encounters on the world map, at least.

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Haven't had the PC Engine out in awhile, and since I just finished playing Wild Arms, which has some staff connections to this series and makes references to it (just minor ones for this installment, I only noticed the Gimil Coin and Lucied), now seemed like a good time to play it.

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Day 205 of posting games I own. This time, Tenshi no Uta for PC Engine. In this RPG with a setting inspired by Celtic mythology, you set out to Cork Castle to get baptized and marry your mysterious orphan girlfriend, only for her to get kidnapped by demons hunting down people of celestial lineage.

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Ha ha, yeah, seeing their name on the package definitely had me going in with lowered expectations! It's a budget title, but there's some interesting ideas here, and it's not totally broken or anything, so...better than a lot of their stuff!

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

I'm not going to try and claim it's amazing or anything, but it nails the vibe that it's going for, and I had a lot of fun with it.

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Those snippets, along with conversations with the locals in town, are the main way the overall story is presented to you. It's fragmentary, often colored by the local religions, and you're left to puzzle out what happened to the planet on your own until the very end of the game.

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

I found the map exploration fun. It's pretty simple, with you just traveling in one of six directions from a settlement and seeing if you find something, but it's satisfying filling in the map, fighting the easy RPG battles, and getting background snippets from the ruins you discover.

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

You travel around, mapping out each region, finding trade goods and reviving old industries by carrying them to different cities, while also delving into ruins and learning about a great cataclysm that took place in the distant past.

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Day 204 of posting games I own. This time, Oasis Road for Playstation. In a world heading toward ruin, where contact between cities has become scant, your caravan travels from town to town, collecting the seeds of knowledge along the eponymous trade route that once connected the major cities.

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

I'm gonna go with "saving the world with the power of music." (I own a copy, but haven't played it, so could be totally wrong.)

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

I break out my cell phone camera and point it at the TV. It's just as immersion breaking, and at least twice as janky of a solution!

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Yeah, I see that Jane got the same treatment. I have a copy, and want to play it sometime, but probably not so soon after going through the original.

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

I think that's it for things I have to say about the game right now, but it would be remiss of me not to post the opening, which has long been a personal favorite of mine.

youtube.com

『WILD ARMS』オープニングムービー

YouTube video by PlayStation Japan

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

There are a few dungeons in the game that split up the party and make you swap between them to solve puzzles using their unique tools to get them back together. Those definitely stood out as one of the game's strong points.

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

(It was fun occasionally checking which names the official translation did/did not get. There were a lot of misses there, but researching some of this stuff would have been difficult back in the day, so it's kind of understandable.)

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

I was initially not so keen on Rudy as a silent protagonist, compared to the other two feeling more fleshed out, but once his backstory came up, it made a lot more sense as a choice. I was pretty proud of myself when I realized that his Grandpa's name is probably supposed to be Giapetto.

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

That wasn't enough of a problem to keep me from enjoying the game, though. This one has a pretty good cast. I was especially fond of this adorable idiot.

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

One issue playing the JP version of this game is that it's fond of fast auto-scrolling text. Once you're out of the prologue, it calms down, but I went and looked up some JP streamers, and they were struggling too, so it's not (just) this being my second language that's the issue.

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

I wanted to play this before tackling Wild Arms 3 for my 12for12, since I know it has a lot of call backs to the earlier games. I had played though the prologue before, but probably not far past it.

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Day 203 of posting games I own. This time, Wild Arms for Playstation. Two drifters and a princess come together to save a wasteland planet that's trying to recover from a war with demons that's just restarted.

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Iriliane @iriliane.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

My cartridge came with all the saves corrupted, but the retry mode where you get 4x xp and gold unlocked, and I think if I ever do get around to playing it, I will shamelessly use that.

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