Electro Swing Progress Report 5: Steady as She Goes · 5:27am February 15th
Chapters Revisited: 25/61 Major Changes: Fixed a few contradictions and clarified a few jargon-y bits.
Made up crystal magical experimentation is difficult to explain in an interesting way sometimes.
Happy Heart's and Hooves day everybody! Hope you all enjoyed it to the extent that you wanted. I did so by not participating in it. I generally skip the holidays that have been commercialized to hell and back. Funny how the most popular holidays are the ones that try to foster some sort of superfluous spending. Be sure to take advantage of the 15th when all of the unsold chocolate goes on sale!
On my end, I've been taking my time with the final check here. Can't believe I'm almost in the 30s now. The process really sped up past chapter 20, which was when AP and myself really started to click if memory serves me right. That combined with a better understanding of what I was writing really helped late 2021/early 2022 Rego out. I think once I hit 32, I probably won't even need to mention any major changes. I am still glad I'm going through this. There are details that I know now after having written the chapters that I can better aim at rather than hit the concept on my timeline/story bible. Thank you all again for bearing with me while I get Electro Swing ironed out.
It really is a lesson of learning when something is "good enough" and to move on from it. I'm sure I could endlessly nitpick the story and get it closer to perfection, but that's obviously a fool's errand. It's why when I decided to do one final check that I would limit myself to execution of ideas in the story now rather than retconning anything. I know a lot of you did not like how the B plot eventually played out. There definitely was a spike in dislikes and loss of readership after Chapter 51, but this is the story I set out to tell, and even if 2024 me likely would've done things differently with hindsight, I still enjoy what I wrote. I hope that you do/did, too!
In other news, I've been playing through the Atlier Ryza games during my downtime. I bought Ryza 1 on sale YEARS ago and just let it sit unplayed on my Switch. I finally took the plunge into the pile of anime that the game is and I can see why it was a 9/10. And for those of you who know what I'm talking about, I'm not referring thighs (though the art design and animation really wants the player to appreciate them). I swear, 70% of my playtime in the first game was just trying to synthesize the perfect weapons and armor, not realizing that I was going overkill with it, which resulted in my absolutely steamrolling the game from the first or second chapter even after bumping up the difficulty. It's just so satisfying to figure out the best way to craft a tool with the special abilities that you want without having to burn through material to refine it later.
It also has my favorite trope: ancient civilizations and lost technology. Give me a middling game and throw in a ruin of a once-proud people whose hubris doomed them, leaving relics of forgotten wonders behind, and that's all you have to do to bait Rego into enjoying it more than he should. I mean, my favorite Mega Man games are the Legends series, and I'd argue they aren't even that good despite having played through the first one many, many times. It's still my favorite game out of the ones I've played on the PS1. Stupid exploration obesession...
Finally, I did mention it earlier in passing, but it is produced by Koei Tecmo, so it has that pervasive horniness baked in like a lot of their titles seem to do. That being said, I find Ryza herself to be adorable. I seriously love her hat and cardigan game, though I'm playing Ryza 2 now and she feels super overdesigned. There's Asymetry in character design, and then there's "we want the character to wear the shortest shorts, show a lot of leg, but still have a thigh gap, so let's have her forget a sock at home." Either way, I do recommend the games. They're fun so far.
I would say more, but that was the bell. Gotta get to teach classes. See ya in the next blog!
- Rego
Oh wow, don't know the last time I've seen Atelier mentioned anywhere. Haven't played a lot of them myself, and haven't played Ryza yet, but they are such good games!
Firis is the next on my list myself, once I'm in a mood to play through an Atelier game.
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It makes me wonder how different each atelier game is now and what sort of surface am I scratching here getting into this. I had a roommate who was listening to some crazy cool final boss music back in college and I asked him what game it was from. He then proceeded to give me a full-on lecture about the Touhou series. It's always these mid-sized anime games that I'm vaguely aware of that turn out to have a history spanning decades with the most niche, dedicated fanbases.
Speaking specifically, the crafting in Ryza feels like a little puzzle game, and I'm very fond of puzzle games. It also feels cozy, remenicscent of Recettear. I'm curious if you know that deep, obscure PC gaming cut.
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Y'know, I've actually been meaning to play Recettear for a long time now and actually finally picked it up, like, two weeks ago to play, but I still haven't sat down to play it yet.
How many Atelier games have you played, out of curiosity? I've only played through a handful — Rorona, Ayesha, Escha & Logy, Shallie, and Sophie. I've also touched Firis and Annie to take a look at what they're like.
It honestly kinda blows me away just how *different* every game in the series ends up being — in both combat and especially synthesis. Both within each mini-series and especially compares to each other mini-series. I can say with full certainty despite never playing Ryza's mini-series that the combat and synthesis in that set of games is unlike any other.
Pwrsonally, the Dusk trilogy is my favorite mini-series — Ayesha, Escha & Logy, and Shallie.
Also, yeah, I personally love those weird semi-obscure games that are just popular enough to have a budget but still niche enough that most people have no idea what they are.
A while ago I was looking into what obscure gems were available for the DS/3DS and found a lot of neat games I never knew about (that I swear I'll get around to eventually
).
Heck, I even found a game Atlas released that's kinda their crack at the Atelier system — ノーラと刻の工房 (nora to toki no koubou) — which does have a fan translation. I can't remember off the top of my head who, but one of the lead artists was someone who worked on the Etrian Odyssey series. It's crazy how much love was put into this little knock-off nobody's ever heard of. Super happy I was able to get my hands on a copy.
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Ryza is the only one I knew about. When I finished it, there were VA recordings summing up their thoughts and sharing their appreciation. That's when the phrase "Atelier Series" was dropped and I was like "Oh... this must be a rabbit hole." You dropped a bunch of names there, so now I see how deep it goes.
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Ooooh yeah, the entire series is a big ol' rabbit hole lol.
Basically the series is composed of many mini-series each set in their own worlds. The current two series are the Secret (Ryza) series and the Mysterious series, which starts with Sophie. Generally the games play similar to others within their mini-series, but somewhat different compared to those outside of it.
Anyway, sorry for rambling so much lol. Have fun!