Strawberry Eggs Plays Baten Kaitos Origins, At-freaking-last

Ugh, one thing after another keep making me re-start this "blog" entry from scratch. Let's just get on with it...

Saturday, Octber 24th

After fighting a group of soldier that apparently couldn't catch the three of them, I run up to the soldiers who can. If I were them, I'd be more suspicious of thee people suddenly giving themselves in, but whatever. After a longish walk to the ship/cell, we meet up with Gibari and King Ladekhan again. We also meet none other than Palolo II. As expected, I had to give my sister a brief refresher as to who Palolo III was. She took an instant liking to the guy, going as far as saying "You make ME hot and bothered!" after he said that to Gibari. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised seeing as she had a dream about Decus a day after meeting him for the first time in Dawn of the New World.

Regardless, in order for Khan *avoids making common Star Trek joke* to formulate a plan, I needed to remember how many goons were in the storehouse. So that's why I had to take that extra-long trek. Lucklly talking to Milly and Guillo "jogs" my/the spirit/Marno's memory and I tell them there were three on the top and five on the bottom. The three of them take out the soldiers who no problem. Even if Ladekhan is a good tactician, only in an RPG can three kids take out trained soldiers, even if they're not very well-trained.

With some help from my sister, I go through the houses in order to get to the secret passage in the pub, meeting a very young Anna (I think I read somewhere that she's nine in this game). I also raised an eyebrow over her saying that it's her pub. I hope she means it's her parents' pub and by extenstion, hers...Regardless, we leave Nashira and after a quick trek through the cloud passage, run into Giacomo, who is apparently as arrogant as ever despite his last beating. While Milly needed a Fate's Cordial, the battle is over with quick.

I don't think I mentioned this before, but I absolutely love the writing in this game. While Eternal Wing's localization was decent, it doesn't have flair that I'm so glad most localized RPGs are using to make a game a much more fun read. *Prays to Arceus that Ignition does a good job on ARF's localization* Aside from Guillo and Milly's spats and Palolo's remarks and wise cracks, I found the two pop culture references that I saw while playing. Even if it's added in, I like references when their done subtly and cleverly. I see Guillo's Donkey Kong reference mentioned often, but I never saw anyone quote Milly's "Oops, we beat you again!" line after kicking Giacomo's rear a second time anywhere.

While still in the Cloud Passage, the boys see Rambari coming to look for them and make a run to the Elnath castle, which is kind of silly since Rambari and Celsica are going back their anyway, but what-have-you. My sister comically wonder why Rambari can't give them a lift back to Elnath when Milly asks the same, to which Rambari replies that it's bad luck to let anyone other than knights ride whatever it is he's riding in. She has an uncanny ability to do that (my sister, I mean).

Back at the palace, the boys get finished being scolded before the young king gets a message about Baelheit's men taking the Cloudvents. Khan apologizes to Sagi about not being able to discuss the Quaester's proposal yet, when an options appears asking to "Hold on" or "Good luck!" I kind of cock my head for second wondering if the first option meant "Hold on, let us help" or "Hold on, can we take care of Verus's business first?" before realizing that the second option is rude regardless of how you look at it. Shortly thereafter I save on the overworld map and ended up turning off the game since my sister had work at 1 PM and it was past 12:30.
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That would have been longer had I not been re-writing it for the third time. I know it's been a while, but we're hoping to be able to play for 3-5 hours every Saturday from now on.

Yup, the writing is definitely better in Origins. A little weak at some points but still a vast improvement over the original IMO.

BTW, just out of curiousity, what is Milly's "Oops, we beat you again!" line from?

Huh...I admit the quote is not exact, but I thought it was fairly obvious...

Maybe this will seem familiar...

Actaully...maybe this as much a reference to Britney Spears as it is to one of Xelha's battle quotes in the first game, "Watch out! I'm not that innocent!" I'm not saying that Xelha's quote is a Spears reference, but perhaps someone working on Origins's localization knew about this quote and realized it resembled lyrics form that song. So why not make a reference to the first game's quote which may or may not be reference in of itself by having the main heroine in the prequel also say a line resembles lyrics from that song, even if it's not the exact lyric.

..I think I just confused myself.

So it WASN'T just me imagining that! Well, maybe.

Glad to see you got a schedule now, though! More playing usually means more fun, right?

Darn, I should have known that! My sister is a huge fan of Britney Spears.

Well if you're imagining it, then so am I.