Eternal Poison – Day 1

Now here's a change, a game that I haven't played at all before. So I'm going into this blind and writing my thoughts as I go...

The intor plot FMV sets up the story that in a kingdom that basically follows a alternate version of crusaders era Christianity (with a Vishnu like goddess figure) the princess suddenly disappears shortly before she's to marry the commander of the army. The king says that the recently appeared city full of monsters is to blame and commands any one willing and able to destroy the place and get the princess back.

Next there's a Wild Arms type character select screen where I get to choose which group I want to follow as they go after the princess. I don't know yet if this would be 3 different stories or if I have to do all 3 before they all join up but it's a nice change form the linear story line of other S-RPGs.

Fortunately this game uses the square-enix standard of pressing all button soft resets the game, I keep selecting a group by mistake instead of brining up their description... -_-;

I'll go with Ashley, Reyna, and Glynne.

So Ashley's master was kidnapped and the pope sends her and Reyna, and Glynne to the monster city to find him. Before going the count (who looks very creepy) gives her a book that catches monsters.

First battle:

This was surprisingly tough, and kinda unnerving when the monsters start talking to the party. During the battle Ashley starts hearing weird voices in her head to use to book (which I was doing and captured one of each monster).

After the fight the weird count shows up (with his pet bear) and it turns out that he's the head of the town that got stuck in the middle of the monster city when it appeared. Even Ashley's companions thinks he's shady.

The little town the count runs (or rather that he has his butler run) has the standard fare, a tavern for recruiting party members and playing a mini-game, a weapon/armor shop, a place for managing the monsters I capturer (haven't really figured that out yet) and an inn for saving and managing stuff. The inn also holds the people I rescue, curtly there is just the one (an condescending guy who doesn't think women should fight for the church). Also in the town I found a solder to add to my party who is hunting down some escaped convicts.

Second Battle:

before the next battle it's revealed that 2 years before hand Ashley went crazy during training and tried to kill Glynne, and the next area looks oddly like the place where it happened... O_o

Ok... during the battle Ashley hears more evil voices telling her to kill and use the monster book (which the monsters seem quite keen on), and it turns out after the fight that the voices are the crazy Gollum side to her Smegol. Also the party is becoming divided with Glynne thinking Reyna (who somehow knows something about “Eternal Poison”) is a spy (or maybe he just wants alone time with Ashley) and Nega-Ashley wanting to kill Glynne.

At least I rescued a musician during the fight, so it's not all crazy time. ^_^

Back at town I recruited another party member who seems to be on a quest with her father of some kind, and the jerk I rescued in the first battle seems to be having quite a hard time locating his family.

That's enough for today, just two battles in and everyone seems either insane or plotting something!