Speaking of powers, I forgot to mention the game has a time manipulation mechanic so you can fast forward or rewind time to a sunrise or sunset. The game made me do this early in the game for a small number of puzzles and then it's like the mechanic just got discarded. I don't know if the game will make me use it again.
I think I mentioned in my last post that I got a new ability to use for moving around the environment and solving puzzles. I failed to mention that it has completely removed one of my annoyances with the game, the difficulty of sneaking up on enemies in the field. With this ability, you are pretty much guaranteed to get the drop on enemies all the time now.
I've also unlocked an ultimate attack for one character, so I guess ultimate attacks are a thing in this game. I'm happy to have one more thing to add to the battle mechanics. So I mentioned getting a fourth playable party member in my last post. I haven't picked up any additional characters. The game only lets you have three characters in battle, but the ability to swap out one of them for your fourth character at any time (like Final Fantasy X) has added another strategic layer to combat that I have enjoyed. I have had one battle break the three character limit and give me up to five, but it involved two characters I wasn't directly controlling helping me in that particular fight, so it doesn't count.
I have also discovered what seems to be the obligatory kickstarter area that these games always have. You know what I mean. It's some location with a bunch of dedications to a bunch of strangers that you know nothing about with out of context stuff written about them that has no meaning to you. I kind of miss the old days where you just put everyone's names in the end game credits instead of these lame kickstarter areas. I just hate this stuff because it pulls you out of the game. Things like that shouldn't exist within a game's world, but there I go sounding like an out of touch old man I guess.
Speaking of things that pull me out of the game's world, I've also encountered an NPC called "Girard the Constructionist"
His face portrait even looks like you know who. I'm must be getting old, because stuff like this or seeing Jim Sterling as a boss in Streets of Red Devil's Dare Deluxe just kind of makes me roll my eyes. Anyway...
I'm glad to finally be able to explore a little, discover some new things, and maybe find some secrets and chests that I couldn't get before or simply missed. I can start looking for more stories for my story teller to read to me, some more stuff for that wheel and figure mini game, music tracks for my pirate band to play, and there's card packs tied to a quiz mini game as well. Oh, and I've unlocked a stats page and a "feats" page, which basically just tells you what the trophies are. I'm trying not to look at it. I like playing blind.
The story continues to be pretty decent and more and more little things are tying into The Messenger. So that's cool.
Some of the bosses are cool, the last one I fought before posting this was:
Spoiler
