SO5Z 0.38.6 playthrough

Introduction

Since I never got to record all of my last play of v0.35.9, I thought I'd try my luck again with the new patch.

You can find the old playthrough here: ☀https://youtu.be/l3O5TvEaLb0?list=PLpnnq5csd9pxoYd0ZKVK4L9YlfuQBI263

I'm really curious how the new quests will turn out and about the new house and follower.

Day 1

Nothing New so far, getting drunk and then beating up som thugs with Therese before we claim Alina and our very own manor.

Day 2

Picking up some quests, taking care of our first investments to get some income, digging up some starting equipment to help out. While we are at it, we're collecting Doll for our team before we head to the slime fort and unlock Elaiya.

With four members in our party, we're good to go.

Day 3

Forgot to talk to Apple Kid on Day 2, so taking care of that before we complete the first guild quest, get us an item shop and unlock Florinne on the way.

With four party members, the orcs are quickly taken care of.

Day 4

Finishing the forge quest to unlock Doll and Kevin, and also running around in circles a lot because I forgot to hand in the last quest three times. Still nothing new so far, but that's going to change.

Day 5

Night or Raping Death and unlock Larelle. Thanks to the free priest buff, we are steamrolling through the hordes of undead.

So the quest is still the same, but new artwork in the end

Day 6-8

Lots of running around, collecting rewards and doing some more investments. Unlocking Violet and Lilac, then Ino so the Manor Invasion gets triggered and unlocks Therese as well.

Thanks to doing the daily random quests so far, there are no problems with regular quests anymore.

Day 9

Adding Penelope to the family.

Day 10 & 11

Unlocking Yamamaya and then getting the next guild quest done so we can unlock the new home in southport and the newest follower Pandora.

Day 12 & 13

A couple of new additions in this part.

First, Larelle has a new sprite and a new chat menu. I like both. I think it's nice to get some comment on the current quest as well as something new each day that explains some of Larelle's backstory. And we get the same feature as Elaiya has/had where there's a remark on each of the other girls. Can't wait to see this for more girls in future updates.

Next, new quest and visiting GearCon. Really funny idea and nicely done, took me a while to figure out what to do but that's okay. Lots of NPCs to talk to, and everyone has something funny to say, great effort.

Then new girl unlocked. I like Padora's sprite and art I guess. I find it kind of creepy to see that her whole back is nothing more than a big hole and you can see the gears inside.

After that, quick trip back to Northmarket and unlocking Meline for the team.

Day 14

Next day, heading to the elf village and unlocking Bronwyn in my least favourite quest. New momentum costs on Bronwyn doesn't make it any better.

I understand where this change is coming from, 0 cost Pinning Arrow was overpowered and now there's at least some momentum management and planning involved. But now I feel like I only want Kyrie even more. 'Old' Bronwyn was just barely able to keep up with the overpowered mage, if she still can now, I don't know.

Day 15

First tournement or welcome to hit and miss. After that, teaming up with Gargan and invading the theatre.

Even though it was a big change, I got used to Bronwyn change pretty fast, she's still my go-to for long single target fights I'd say. The quest so far is nothing new, but I like the changes in the background music. Definitely fits better, great job!

Day 16

Collecting our quest rewards and Search Party quest, which will also be enough to unlock the next guild rank if I didn't count wrong.

Long quests, many fights but I still take the rather easy exp and chances for trophies. Since there are exclusively physical attackers, Larelle and her necrotic magic get the chance to be useful, also she's the only one with group damage so far.

And in the end, I just get reminded how overpowered Kyrie is. Luckily, we'll unlock her soon.

Day 17&18

So, I forgot to record day 18, but it was only the daily random quest and the guild party for the next rank, so we'll just skip right to the next day.

Now we can collect all the missing members of our party, starting with Gargan and unlocking the Westcastle Manor. Having Larelle in our party lets us skip the last boss and see the new and improved scene, so we use a priest buff to make the fights before a little less annoying. The last mini-boss we actually fight can reflect magic and with the buff run out takes a while to pummel down. Also, with all the extra experience we had picked up, we now have a group heal which will come in handy on the next quest.

Day 19

So, Westcastle Manor is ours, now we pick up our last girls. First is Gargan which only takes a cutscene, then comes Yeon. The fights are annoying with a lot of stuns and knockdowns, another mini-boss that reflects magic and in my opinion the hardest boss fight so far. We use Larelle to soften up the group with necrotic and psychic magic while our Hero and Bronwyn knock them out one by one. Yeon on her own can't do much and so she ends up in the dungeon. Which, she just casually accepts and goes with it once inside. Am I the only one who thinks that's a little weird?

Day 20

Now it's time to get Kyrie into the team, but first some tower raiding. Since every enemy in here can drain your mana in some way, no Larelle this time. And since the endboss is resistant to melee damage, Elayia and Bronwyn get to team up. The quest is nothing new, but I still like this endboss in here.

I noticed something odd. When I was using Elayia's 'Covering Fire', it used 5 momentum from her and from the hero. However, when the hero had zero momentum, it worked anyways. There's probably a bug in there somewhere.

Only nine more girls to collect.

Day 21

With Kyrie in tow, we're going into the forgotten tomb to ear a nice reward of 100.000 sil and unlock Eulania and the Phantom Knight class on the way.

Kyrie makes the fights almost trivial, unless you get five reflects in a row like me. Another cool bossfight at the end, and we're done. A new scene as well, but it's text only. Oh well.

Day 22

Three more of the list. With the quest reward and selling some unnecessary stuff, we get Orange Kid unlocked and both her and Apple Kid into our Westcastle Manor.

Next we go back to the elves and unlock our last housing and our last follower with an availabe love quest as well, Nerys.

The dungeon is kind of annoying, but the boss fight is ridiculously easy. As much as I like Larelle's new sprite and backstory, she still doesn't pack much punch, even with a weakspot to hit. I probably could have save some time here if I had brought Yamamaya or Meline instead.

Day 23-25

Now to collect the last few followers we still need. Randi and Serade offer nothing new so far, Natys does. I'm really interested if her potential backstory/questline will somehow interact with the 'agent of the Queen'-arch. Also new scene as well. I find it hillarious how Florine casually sips some tea in the background.

Day 26

Quick shopping trip and a party to get Nicholas unlocked. Only three more to go, with Chinmei still being in some distance as we are a little low on sil at the moment. Time to get working on our fame some more, also the first few love quests are closing in.

Day 27

Return to Nicholas to unlock him as a follower. Good for him that he doesn't have to stand around outside on rainy days anymore.

In Westcastle, we take care of the second tournement and get some fame and a new trophy for our home, then off to the Didi concert. We pick Larelle, Therese and Gargan, since we want to boost their happiness and get the love quests unlocked quickly.

Didaria is very interesting as a pure support member for any party, but I think having an additional damage dealer or caster still outweighs the benefit of an extra turn on occasion, so we won't use her too much.

Day 29&30

I noticed I didn't record Day 28, but that was literally only unlocking Renfield in Westcastle and the scene that goes along, so nothing new we missed. Now that we have every follower except Chinmei unlocked, we can take care of some trust scenes we had been skipping. Yamamaya goes first, then Lilac and Violet. I've included the gifting tour this time, because I have been skipping it in the last few videos and I thought maybe you'd like to get an overview on where everyone stands at the moment.

Day 31

Offscreen, we got our first Love quest from Elayia, but since it's a rainy day, we take use of that and do the Ice Nymph quest. We get another weapon upgrade for Kyrie from it, which is useful since we will be using her pretty much all the time from now on. A new set of armour for Larelle/Meline doesn't hurt much either. Of course, we are severely overlevelled and have acid magic in our arsenal, so we crush the dungeon easily.

Day 32

Gargan reached the next trust level, so we do her quest first before we go after Elayia's Love Quest. She has the most interesting backstory so far and her quest is so nicely done with setting up the mood and then the final boss room with all the boxes and crates for her hide and hit tactics. We got hints about her husband and how she became a headhunter from various chat messages, so there is also a nice twist at the end story-wise.

I haven't seen the new quests yet, but this one is my favourite Love Quest so far.

Day 33

Before we do Alina's Love, we deal with the task we got from Shally first, mostly because we want to get the Archmage Ring for Kyrie on the way. Alina's quest is very long and half-cost spell well come in handy, not to mention it's also a nice damage boost.

The endboss has a lot of HP but little else, so we're done pretty quickly.

Day 34&35

We finally have enough sil, so we unlock our last girl Chinmei. After that, it's time to start Alina's Love quest, with dinner at her parents. Once that blows over, Alina tells us to raid our neighbour's mansion where the local criminal mastermind resides.

This dugeon has everything: Enemies with debuffs, group damage, one-shot mechanics and annoying blockers, and lots of them at once. Add five mini-bosses with different mechanics each and we have ourselves a challenge. This time, we are doing a quest on its appropriate level and as expected, it's a challenge. While the story behind the quest is not as interesting as Elayia's quest, this dungeon is a lot more fun.

Each on their own, the mini-bosses are not too hard: You get a duelist with stuns, a sniper, a mage with lots of group damage, a tanky brawler and finally, a boss who can avoid almost all of your attacks. The AI is also more advanced, as they will use Cleansers when debuffed by Bronwyn or use Ethers when we burn their mana with Spirit Aura. Then, we face the final boss and all of the join into the fight one after another and suddenly, we can quickly get into a lot of trouble.

What I found out works best is to focus on the caster boss as soon as she appears, since she can deal a lot of group damage with fireball, which also burns your party and makes it impossible to heal the incoming damage from all the mini-bosse at once. You need to get her down preferably before the tanky boss joins in and uses guard. I also managed to burn her mana which delays her a turn to use an Ether. While Kyrie cleaves down the group with Burning Blizzard, Bronwyn and the Hero focus on the caster first, then the sniper since she has a one-shot-technique. Yeon has to heal a lot, but manages to sneak in a few Dark Blasts to lower the enemy attack. My advice would be to try and debuff the jumping dragon lady with Bronwyn if you get the opportunity, but ignore her most since her damage is not too high anyways. The tank died from absorbing the group damage and the duelist joined in when the others were already dead, so I could quickly finish her as well.

The main boss can stun your party and will use Cleansers on occasion, but his damage is bearable, so you can ignore him until all his guardians are down. Once finished, we take over the local crime syndicate, free Alina's brother and enjoy one of the best scenes so far. We also get a new accessory for the Hero that lets us attack twice occasionally.

Overall, in my opinion the best dugeon and the most interesting endboss. Even if I'm not as investesd in the story as I was with Elayia, Alina's Love quest is definitely on the top for me.

Day 36

And, from one of the best dungeons to the next. Meline's Love quest takes us to her old home with some backstory on her and the Hero, as well as some comedic relief. We collect Doctor Weird Vol.3 along the way and get easy access to lightning damage for all our spellcasters.

The enemies in the dungeon offer no resistance at all, so we take the chance to use some fire and radiant spells for the achievements and the buffs. While the enemies are easy, this dungeon has a lot of riddles and puzzles. Nothing too difficult, but it's a nice change of pace. In various rooms, we collect seven statues and open the door to the hidden vault, where we fight our first dragon. With Meline's radiant magic, we keep the dragon dazed while Kyrie's cold magic does tons of damage and quickly ends the fight. A quick walk home later, we get a visit from an angel and our mandatory victory scene.

Overall, another love quest well done.

Day 37

And we're on a roll with Yamamaya's Love quest right behind. No dungeon this time, instead we're fighting a tournament which fits so well to Yamamaya. It's really nice to see how much thought went into each quest to make it fit each girl so well and not get repetetive. While the fights are rather boring, because we're overlevelled, the dialogue in between rounds is funny enough to keep me interested. Also, after Alina and Meline, this love quest is refreshingly short.

We grab an accessory for Yamamaya, some sil and a nice trophy, as well as our mandatory victory scene in new art style.

Day 38

Gargan's Trust quest is next, a new one for me. A lot of try and error with the wind puzzles on this one which can be slightly annoying. Luckily, the dungeon isn't too big, so we manage to pick everything up with only a few resets. Neither the enemies nor the endboss are particullary dificult either.

I don't really get why we need Gargan on this quest, she doesn't contribute anything except one line of dialogue when we enter for the first time. Maybe she should have explained about the shrines or something similar, like this the quest could as well be just any adventure guild quest.

Also, there is this strange bug where we receive experience and loot twice. That's clearly not intended and I've tried a few times to work around it, but I couldn't figure out what triggers this bug.

Day 39

We go back to the farm for Penelope's Love quest. Compared to the ones we've seen so far, this one is rather dull but at least it's short. The mushrooms are easily overcome even at lower level, all you have to do is bring either Kyrie or Meline, as they are all vulnerable to cold, acid or fire magic. Same goes for the endboss, so we grab our loot and the victory scene and move one.

Day 40

With no relationship quests available at the moment and all followers unlocked, we can now work on our fame and next guild rank. We start at Southport and clear the infested ship from all kinds of spiders. That also gives us a weapon upgrade for Bronwyn, which will be useful later. Other than not, not too much at it for this quest. It doesn't matter who we bring along, but if we were lower level, Meline would be awesome here since she can panic all the enemies with her fire magic.

Day 41

Next quest in Southport is the werewolf quest in Huntervale. This is another starting quest we skipped and now we can steamroll through with anything. If we were lower level, again Meline would be great with radiant and fire magic, but you should definitely bring Felix as a healer since these werewolves can hit very hard. We pick up our weapon upgrade for Doll on the endboss, which is a group encounter with a healer. Since we one-shot most of them, that doesn't matter much to us, but on lower level I'd recommmend you kill the druid first and then finish up the werewolves, since he is the only one who doesn't regenerate health passively.

Day 42

And finally, here is the one I've been waiting for: Larelle Love quest. Larelle got a complete overhaul, a nice backstory, lots of new chat options, so I had some expectations when it came to this quest. I was not disappointed.

First of all, the dungeon. It fits very well into the necromancer theme and give Larelle a good reason to return to her old home, also an explanation why she was hiding in that tomb in the first place. The enemies are though and deal a lot of damage if you let them. Sadly Larelle isn't too effective against them unless you thought her other magic like we did. That again fits the story quite well, since she says she wasn't strong enough to explore the lower levels of the tomb on her own. Still, if you're not prepared you'll end up with an effective party of three for the majority of the dungeon, which can be annoying.

First, we have a small riddle, four different types of weapons and four tombs. I was trying to figure it out, until I realized you could just try and error it, which makes it kind of pointless. Maybe if we had that 'click -you're right'-sound only after we placed all four weapons, it would be more challenging. Then again, not everyone likes riddles, so it is as it is.

Using Larelle's necromancy, we then build a bridge out of skeletons across some poisoned water. That's just hiliarious, especially the chants Larelle uses to resurrect them. My latin is a bit rusty, but "Et factum est waffles" made me laugh.

So it's final boss time and it's a challenge. The spirit comes with a horde of seven skeletons who can either guard and block damage or stagger your party and dish out heavy hits. The spirit herself buffs her party with resistances against acid and radiant magic, can heal the entire group and deal crazy group damage to you, including fire damage that burns you. The skeletons are once again completely immune to Larelle's spells unless you taught her different magic, but Chain Lightning and Burning Blizzard work well enough, luckily.

First try was to kill off all the skeletons as quickly as possible, then focus on the boss. As soon as she is out of skeletons though, she just calls in seven new ones and immediately buffs them up. It doesn't help that she can potentially cast two group damage spells a turn (possibly more, since she takes at least 3 actions a turn). Ignoring the skeletons doesn't work either, since they will quickly overwhelm you with all their damage.

So, second try we kill off all skeletons except one and hope that she doesn't ressurect them on a timer or something, which she doesn't. Phew. Also, Yeon is now on constant heal duty and we back up with potions until she can catch up. Hero in Phantom Knight class also allows us to evade damage for three turns, which we make heavy use of. Once our party is stabilized, we ignore the last remaining skeleton and focus our fire at the boss. She still takes a while to go down, but if you keep healing you will endure her in the end.

Larelle grabs the artefact, drops it and the tomb starts to collapse. Larelle refuses to leave, which is in character for her I think. In all her dialogue, she's constantly implying that she sees the Hero more as a tool for her own needs and now that she has power at reach, she desperately wants it and gets angry when the Hero drags her out. It also fits how she reacts to the sudden confession and the reunion with her mother. The only thing that I think comes a little out of nowhere is the confession itself. Maybe I overlooked something, but the Hero never made any implication that he likes Larelle in particular, other than asking her about her personal background at some points.

So, mandatory victory scene and some insane buffs for Larelle. The way I understand it, she now partcially always hits a weakspot no matter what, since she's not a 'Mistress of dark arts'. And she gets a new and powerful artefact on top of it. Now way she's going to be overpowered from now on, right?

Day 43

Therese Love Quest next, and again it's a great quest. Instead of visiting a friend, we find out that Therania has abducted the Prince to perform a dark ritual. We end up clearing out the paladin castle from fallen angels and demons who got summoned by Therese's friend. The enemies have a lot of resistances and can be quite though to take down. They also can debuff your party to lower your mana and health pools. We fight our way to the top and take out some more fallen angels to break through a fire barrier and finally reach Therania and the Prince.

Although Therese manages to save the Prince, Therania completes the ritual and turns into the Apotheosis Maiden. She will always start by setting on of your party member's health to 1 and will repeat this spell randomly later into the fight. This is especially annoying, since she can also cast a group wide radiant attack which leaves your party members dazed.

The easiest way to deal with her is to burn her mana with Spirit Aura and then just beat her down. If you don't have Spirit Aura available, you need to deal with your party member's health set to 1 every other turn. Luckily, Therese has Shining Strike or Lay on Hand to help out healing when it happens, so it shouldn't be too hard.

Therese get promoted to Knight-Exemplar by the King, get a shiny badge and roll in the mandatory victory scene. Again, the story fits nicely into the backstory we got from Therese so far, although this one seems a little more open-ended then the other ones. I'd like to see if the 'agent of the Queen'-arch and Therese now being a royal knight will interfere at some point.

Day 44

Time to finally level up our guild rank. We start the last quest we have left from southport which also gives us a nice lead to the demon cult we've met in Westcastle before.

I picked Elayia, Gargan and Kyrie to investiage the corps circle, since they have the most clues at what has happened. If you bring anyone else, they more or less just tell you they don't know anything. With all our clues, we had back to Southport and listen in on some members of the cult and finally get our lead.

We end up in a pocket dimension and fight some imps and three summoners who keep running away. The final boss is a demon as well who offers us a pact, but we take him down instead. Again, Spirit Aura trivializes this fight since the demon can't do much without mana. If he has mana, he will occasionally drop all stats of a party member at once. The fight is doable with any kind of party of course, but since we brought Gargan, we get some additional dialogue in the end. Hand in the quest, find out we've been scammed, and next day.

Day 45

We got our invitation for the last tournament in Westcastle which will give us enough fame to reach the next rank. This time, it's 21 fights one after another.

With our level advantage, it's not too much trouble, even if the Visionary Wizard keeps using Phase Out and Takeoff back to back which makes him impossible to hit. I don't think this is intentional, so either this is a bug or I just got really unlucky. We end up using some scrolls to take him down. The other contestants are way less annoying and so we collect our trophy and head home, where the adventure guild has prepared a party for us.

For the next rank up, we definitely need a bigger room because this place is crammed with all of our girls in one place. Victory scene with Shally is text only, and we start our next day as banneret of the adventure guild.

Day 46

We start the day with three brand new quests, one of them from Southport. For the sake of getting this town done, we start with that. And since I've found out that Larelle's new trinket also restores mana each turn, she's definitely staying in our party.

Our friendly professor who sent us beat up students before now wants to explore a forgotten ruin with us, for science! And to show his colleague who's a named female character and therefore bound to reappear later down the line?

Anyways, we open the door to the ruin with Larelle's necromancy and in we got with the professor joining in our party. He has a lot of spells in his arsenal, so he's useful at least. Unfortunately, we fight a lot of golems in this ancient facility and they either evade spells a lot or reflect them. Also, at least one sort of golems has an attack that our casters are all vulnerable to. Since we have Yeon and Kyrie with us, that makes the fights highly annoying. But, we're high enough level to get through it anyways. We collect jade bits, solve an easy math riddle to get power, defeat a pushover-miniboss, create a key following the instructions from Eulania, who can read the signs at the walls. At the end, we find a computer interface which is password protected and calls the endboss.

We face one of each golem type and a 'console' with some group damage. The golems fall down from our own spells, but they respawn quickly. Luckily, our damage is high enough to take out the boss before we run into any trouble. We collect our reward which is two tomes.

Overall, a lot of running back and forth in this quest and rather annoying enemies. It's okay, but not one of my favourites.

Day 47

For the next quest, we take on Nicholas' request and travel to the magic dump near Southport. This quest isn't too bad, fight your way through some slimes and golems to the boss in the middle. There is a point when this quest gets really easy and you kill all the slimes before the merge and explode. We easily have that level already, so it's just going through the motions for us.

The endboss tries to drain our mana, but we get it down before that becomes an issue. Since our whole party knows cold damage, Kyrie's Cold Snap spell speeds up the encounter even further.

We deliver the blackmail material to the Countess and get our reward the next day. We'll meet the Countess again soon, in another quest.

Day 48&49

Time to start our quests in eastport, we have barely done anything there so far. The paladin quest takes us to yet another zombie town. This time, it's infested zombies that spawn another add after being killed. With our overpowered group, there is no real challenge anyways.

Down the well, we fight our way through some fish creatures and run into some traps. We have to activate them in order to proceed. These traps change depending on who you bring along in your party, but most of them can be countered if your bring along a healer or have a spare cleanser/dispeller. Kyrie and Larelle get their mana burned which is also an none-issue.

The endboss is infected as well, but we have the right sources of damage to get both down easily. After that, it's the one-on-one against the grandmaster of the paladins. He can daze us and heal himself, so our top priority is to stack up momentum fast enough to burn his mana with Spirit Aura. That way, we can consistently hit him and mitigate most of his damage with Vitality. If that's not enough, we still have potions.

Since we freed the nuns during the Manor Invasion, we get paid for this quest. Also, we get our final weapon upgrade for the Hero, but first we unlocked our final scene with Chinmei.

Day 50&51

Final weapon upgrade takes a whole day, so we take care of the mandatory things before we send Kevin to work. We get a short cutscene with one of our girls. It's always the girl with the highest relationship points who comes to you, but the story is always the same.

With Fate's Ender finally equiped, we go to Westcastle to deal with Orange's Love quest. It starts as a quick fetch quest but soon enough, we have to fight our way through a messy alchemist hall with lots of annoying enemies. We have phoenix who respawn after being killed, enemies who can burn, poison or pin us, and have overall a lot of health. Thankfully, our party of Yeon, Larelle and Kyrie has a lot of group damage to deal with everything.

And then, we run into the first mini-boss: A lead-elemental that reflects all magic damage. We ran right into that with our spellcaster party, so we have no chance but to slowly pummel it down. Again, not dificult, but annoying.

We also meet a cockatrice who offers a feather if we free her, so we do that. I don't know what happens if we abuse her, but I guess we'll have to fight both of them in the end then. By freeing one, we only face a single angry cockatrice on our way out, once we have collected and cooked up all materials we need.

The endboss, an angry cockatrice, looks awesome and doesn't last very long. We just keep its attack low with necrotic damage and kill it off with cold damage, using its weakness.

Mandatory victory scene with Orange who apparently just needed some cash and a delivery guy to get happy. The buff we get can be very useful, since we will encounter a few more enemies with one-hit-kill abilities, but I suppose it's more for the later game.

Day 52

In Northmarket Manor, we get another brand new quest from Alina and Florine. Somebody stole shipments from our shops, so we decide to go after them. There's a convenient new tower on the world map that seems just the place where someone would take our stolen good.

On the way to Westcastle, we take a short trip to deliver Mitzi's letter and take care of another side quest. Then, we head right into the new dungeon.

We face some very annoying enemies who hit hard, take a lot of hits to go down and apply all sorts of debuffs. The staircases are out, so we climb up some vines instead. On the first floor, we can fight a minator-mini-boss who hits hard but does little else. We just lower his attack with Larelle and then blast him down to get another weapon upgrade for Felix later.

One floor higher and we're ambushed by some guards. They are not that though, but they respawn endlessly so don't waste your time like I did and accept that your are forced to lose this encounter. The Hero gets captured and we switch to Alina.

Only to witness a hostile takeover from Florine. What? Did anyone see that coming, because I surely didn't.

Anyways, Raina and Meline get suspicious and catch up with Alina. Raina won't follow Florine's orders since she's not collared and we learn that Meline isn't a slave because she put on her own collar. So there's actual rules behind how those collars work, apparently. The three girls follow a lead to Westcastle, where Alina suspects something going on.

As it turns out, she's right. Doralice, whose marriage we sabotaged, and Florine have teamed up for revenge on the Hero, and it's up to Alina to save him. By sneaking through the manor without being seen. A nice change of pace from the usual dungeons, but it's definitely a lot of try and error to find your way and find out what to do.

We get rewarded by having Alina beat up Doralice in an epic one on one fight. Once she is done with, some more of the girls show up and fight their way through the guards so everyone can get away. The Hero confronts Florine and we get some world-building done as he explains how the collars actually work and that there are ways around them, like being of a different race like Bronwyn and Yamamaya who help beat up the guards, or not understanding the language of an order like we see with Chinmei.

Also, self-collared slaves are not bound to obey orders. That leaves me with the question why Yeon or Serade who put on their own collars didn't notice anything earlier on their own. Or why Meline never told anyone that she's doing this because she wants to and not because of the collar.

Anyways, mandatory victory scene (with some creepy waterboarding) and Florine gets put in a cell. I wonder if there will be more happening with her anytime soon.

Day 53

With Florine in a cell and Penelope handling the shop, we can get back to finishing some more quests. In Eastfort, we head to the Engineer Corps and get sent to the sewer. Since the Hero chickens out, we only sent the three remaining members of our party down to take care of some trolls, slimes and rats.

Really put some effort into this quest, since your second party member will always be promoted to leader for this mission and you get a unique set of dialogue for each one. Also, the elven chest event is a little different for each one, with Kyrie and Bronwyn being able to read the inscription and Chinmei just breaking it open. I think it's a very cool idea to have the party act independently for a change, even if it is just a quick dungeon.

The endboss isn't too much of a challenge, he comes with a lot of weaknesses and only two weak guards you can quickly take down. Occasionally, he can deafen your party members and once he's low enough, he will use potions. If you bring any form of fire damage to keep him burned, the healing won't be an issue. Since he's mostly doing melee attacks, it's recommended you bring either necrotic damage to lower his attack or radiant damage to keep him dazed. He has a lot of HP, but no matter what party you bring along, he won't be much of an issue.

Back out, we learn that there is a hidden demon cult in Eastfort, so we end the day and get ready for part two tomorrow.

Day 54

Just out the gates of Eastport, we meet up with the rest of the task force and get sent into the demon hideout. We fight our way through some soldiers and imps, nothing our over-levelled party can't handle.

At the end, we fight the master demon. He summons some guards from time to time, which he will use to buff himself and regain health, so it's best to kill them off before he can. Bring some group damage along and it shouldn't be a problem. As for the boss, he uses venom magic and tries to poison you. You can burn his mana with Spirit Aura to prevent that, or just use cold or radiant magic to quickly finish him off.

Collect the reward and the day will end. Only one more 'old' quest to be done with "Elf half empty", and then we can enjoy the new endgame quests we unlocked.

Day 55

I totally lied. There are two quests left we already know from the last time, and this is one of them. Our last avialable Love Quest from Nerys and another occasion where we get a temporary party member (if memory serves right, this quest was the one that introduced this mechanic to the game). Under Westcastle, Nerys suspects a hidden elven shrine, with potential treasure, so we go and investigate.

Nerys joins our party and comes with some decent gear and a nice variety of evocations. While usually harder to handle and setup up properly, ecovations have the benefit of being generally more powerful than normal spells. Or, they would if our party level wasn't so high already. Nerys comes with a healing spell, lightning and cold damage and a very cool ability to give an enemy a weakness to lightning. The general emenies in the dungeon don't live long enough to make good use of it, but it can be helpful later on the bossfight.

Our underground dungeon comes with a variety of orcs to fight through. Each type of orc comes with an ability to buff its party and they bring a mixture of melee, range and magic damage for your party to deal with. With high enough level, you can just decimate them with group damage like we did, but if not the packs of orcs offer a very well rounded obstacle. Unlike other dungeons, where there is usually one dangerous enemy you need to kill off first, this time it depends heavily on your own party setup on which one you want to get rid of first. Once again, a good example on how diversified this entire game really is.

Other than orcs, the dungeon also has us deal with elven riddle chests. Solve an acutal riddle to collect four keys and gain access to the elven shrine and the endboss. On the way, read through some tomes that give us a very nice overview of the ancient spirits that the elves once worshipped.

Also, this dungeon has, in my opinion, the best background music so far. If there was anything to change about this dungeon, I'd ask that the background music won't be interupted by the battle theme.

For the final boss, we fight an acutal spirit from elven legend, the Spirit of Snow and Seed. She's using evocations against us and hits us with cold and necrotic damage. Also, she can seed our party members to drain health from them each turn or heal herself. It's possible to burn her mana with lightning damage or Spirit Aura, but she has multiple ways to restore mana, including draining mana from your entire party. In the end, it's an endurance round and even if you win, you don't actually kill her. Instead, she stripes Nerys of her power and vanishes. Nerys realizes that if she wants to change the life of the elves, she has to do it on her own and not rely on the spirits to rescue them.

Manadatory victory scene on top of the former altar, and we have finished all the Love quests currently in the game.

Day 56

And now, the last quest I still knew from before, Elf Half Empty, where we finally find out why the elves are nearly extinct, head to Southport to get help from an half-elven professor and fight down a racist society who abducted our professor, as well as people from other non-human races. Because racism is bad, we head to the headquater, take them down and free all the prisoners.

On our way, we fight through groups of enemies that come with a diverse party-setup. Like with the orcs before, you can decide which ones you want to take down first depending on your own party, or just slice through them as we do. Unlike most dungeon, you won't see all the enemies from the start, instead they will appear once you open certain doors.

Opening the right doors is the main challenge of this dungeon, but luckily we find a friendly orc on the way who explains us how they work. In the end it comes down to an easy math riddle, or simply try and error. Free all the prisoners if you want, or head straight downstairs to the professor. To do so, you need to pick up all the mana-orbs and carry them to the lowest level of the dungeon.

On your way, you have to fight the boss group of this dungeon, which consist of powered-up versions of all the enemies you already faced down. They have a lot of health and dish out a lot more damage than the regular types.

Free the professor and head back to the elf village, only to find out that your victory scene will be delayed. Oh well.

Day 57

We have a visitor in Northmarket Manor, but first there is something going on in Eastfort. Kellos soldiers are invading and have slaughtered down every soldier in town. Naturally, we fight them back. And loot every soldier we find along the way. It would be a shame if their items would be wasted, right?

So, Kellos soldiers, nothing we haven't seen before, but powered up to match our party level, of course. We only have one way to go, because of barricades and fires that block our path. We save the blacksmith who didn't want to work for us before, and finally reach our estate. Randi and the kids are fine, but Serade is still missing. Of we go to reach our shop and save her.

On the way, near the gates, we face down a group of extra powerful soldiers who power up a siege machine. In this mini-bossfight, take out all the soldiers first and the main weapon won't be much of a deal. We meet the Dark Wanderer from before and he tells us that the Kellos soldiers have rounded up all civilians near the inn. Our item shop is empty, so Serade has to be with the other civilians.

We reach the inn and get confronted with the enemy general, called Barst the Lion. He gives us two chances to submit, but we fight him anyways as our final boss.

This encounter is a multi-phase boss fight that changes depending on how much health Barst has left. At the beginning, he will melee attack and try to stun you. After that, he starts using scrolls to deal damage to your entire group and reflects magic damage. In the last phase, he will chuck down potions to restore his health. Since this can drag out the fight endlessly, you should bring along some form of fire damage to keep him burned and cut his healing by half. Since he uses scrolls, burning his mana to cut down his group damage won't work either, you'll have to heal through it. This fight is the toughest you have to face so far.

So imagine how bad I felt when I realized you're forced to lose this encounter. If you want a challenge, go for it, it's doable as proven, but you can save yourself a lot of time by just submitting right away.

The Queen summons you for an audience and it's decided that she will take advantage of us being able to enter Eastfort as we want, because we had to swear that oath.

I'm not a big fan of forced failures in bossfights. Either have me lose on turn one with an obvious one-hit-kill move or just don't make it a fight at all, but don't make me waste five minutes or more only to cheapshot me in the end. The fact that we get an, at this point, useless item as a reward for fighting doesn't really make it better for me.

I like the idea, I like the implications for the story, but I don't like the way it's executed in this quest.

Day 58

After being defeated by Barst the Lion, she summons us to the Kellos headquarter and sends us on a special mission. We are to attack a Kellos soldier camp near Lumberhill and drive away Evaine. Apparently, she's not fit being a general, or at least Barst thinks so, and instead of dealing with things himself, he want to send us to do the dirty work.

So we enter the camp, but instead of a frontal attack, we sneak around in the shadows. You can avoid most of the encounters here, but with our high level there's not much challenge either, so we take them all out. Go all the way up the cliff to get another piece for our special armor, then jump down the haystack. Use the horse for a distraction, then we face Evaine once more.

Her fight isn't that exciting, just keep your party members healthy because she can occasionally do a big hit on your entire party. She will buff her attack stat, so if you have necrotic damage to counter this at your disposal, you should use it.

Once we've beaten her, you get the chance to either ravish her and by that chase her off, or warn her of Barst's plans. For the first one, you get a text-only scene, for the second some more dialogue. It's very likely that your choice will decide how the next part of the questline will play out, but so far we can't tell yet.

I'm not the biggest fan of stealth missions, so it's nice you get the choice to actually fight the soldiers if you want. Also, the Kellos quest line just got interesting after we've been cheap-shotted on the prior quest.

Day 59

We get called to Southport by the Countess that blew us off earlier. She sends up to some magic swamp to get the brain of a purple dragon in exchange for 'anything we want'. So, off we go.

Typical dugeon at first, a few weak enemies, since this is an repeatable dungeon you could visit very early on, and so we fight our way north to the dragon's lair. It's protected by some magic force field, and we need to find a way to take it down. Luckily, on our way we free a newt from some kobolds, and the little fellow offers us help from his village.

In the village south, we convince the chief of newts to to help us out if we take out some kobolds for him. Easier said than done, since our party stays behind to teach some magic to the newts, so it's only the Hero this time, and three random newts.

A very nice idea to mix things up a little and also give you this 'new game' flair since your newts are level one and need to be levelled up to be effective. If your newts die, you can't ressurect them, instead you can hire new ones from the chief, but they will be level one again. Since there's only so many enemies and only so much experience, I'd recommend you feed your newts potions and health items to keep them alive and reach higher levels.

There is an optinal mini-boss near the first tower that you can pummel down for some lion hide. In the village, one of the newts can craft weapons and armour for your newts, as well as a new cloak for you. With that, you can now take out the kolods without much trouble.

So we head to the tower to get some scrolls, deliver them to the chief and then go back to the northern area to free more newts from a cell. Once that's done, the chief gets convinced to take down the barrier for us. Into the lair, and get ready to face another dragon, this time with your regular party once more.

The purple dragon can put our party members to sleep and daze them. Also, it will take off at some point and be out of range for any melee damage, but our spellcasters still can hit it. Bring someone to dispell the sleep and some cold magic, and you shouldn't have too many problems with this one. Collect the dragon brain for the Countess and a dragon sinew for Bronwyn's weapon upgrade, and back to Southport we go.

Mandatory victory scene with the Countess who agrees to be our slave at night, but keep her title during the day. We agree, and the day ends. Unlike usual, we don't head home but instead wake up in the Countess' home. Only to find out that the Countess has been killed, somebody took our sword and left our old one from the beginning of the game behind. To make everything perfect, guards are entering the mansion and think we have killed the Countess. What a mess! So, we jump out of the window and sneak back to Northmarktet for help. We end up at Raina's home.

Overall a cool idea for a quest, even if levelling up the newts can be a little tedious. A lot of the encounters can be skipped, so you can decide if you want to sneak through or fight them all. Just like in Cannibal Corps Part 1, I'd love to see this idea taken a little further. Instead of leaving your other party members behind, why not give all of them a team of newts and go after different objectives? Just an idea, but I think that would be awesome.

Day 60

And just when I thought more variety in quest would be awesome, we get this! With the Hero hiding away from the guards and no chance to get to our Manor for backup, we take control of Raina to clear out this mess.

We figure out that whoever took our sword at the beginning of the game must be behind what's happening right now. With Gargan joining in, we go investigae what happened during the first night when we were robbed. So off we go to follow our clues that lead us, at the tiny church in the slums. It's not locked despite the sign, so we go in and find our endboss, the demon Bell. As it turns out, the demon cult is behind all of it from the very start.

Bell will over time lower nearly all of our party's stats with her spells. Since we have only Raina and Gargan, we have no good way to heal or buff ourselves, but we Raina's knockdown and Gargan's stun, we can basically lock her down for a very long time. If our attack goes too low to deal significant damage, Raina can use Phalanx and deal damage based on her buffed defense stat.

Whether you win or loose, Bell will flee and you're faced with another member of the demon cult, none other than Xarven, leader of the adventure guild and Raina's and Gargan's father. He tries to force them into joining him, but before a fight begin, a troup of soldiers from Nicholas storms in and Xarven flees. The Hero's name is cleared and Gargan reveals herself to her mother. They decide to investigate in the adventure guild, and the day ends.

Very nicely done, even if there's not much fighting, it's very cool to get control of other party members and see them in action. It's always nice to learn more about the 'side characters' in such a way. I really hope we get more like this on occasion.

Day 61

We head to the adventure guild and find a book that mentions a hidden fortress in the mountains. We go check it out and fight our way to the top. On our way, we face powered up soldiers, demons and fallen angels of all kinds.

With that much diverse of an enemy pool, fights are bound to be annoying despite our high level. We get debuffed, multiple status alignments, mana drained by enemies that also hit very hard and have a lot of health. I'd recommend taking a more balance party to this then I did, with so many enemies resisting my spells and draining mana, it wasn't that much fun. It's definitely a step up in difficulty as well.

At the top, we meet our old friend Borgen the actor. After he spills out all of his secrets, he attacks us with two very strong demons at his side. Borgen will try to poison our party, then demons can guard and deal high damage to our entire group, even stun and burn us. Also Borgen will evade most of our group damage, so it's probably easiest to take them out one by one and heal through the incoming damage as best as we can.

After the fight, we find out that we can't go after Xarven to the demon realm as easily as we thought and Gargan calls it a suicide mission. Raina insists and offers herself as a slave if we go anyways, and of course the Hero agrees.

A nice spike in difficulty and a reminder that the demon cult means serious business. The boss fight is not too exciting, but gets the message to us that whatever comes next will be way more dangerous. No new game mechanics, but a very nice story quest.

Day 62

So, I though there was only today's quest left and then I'd be finished, but I've been informed that there is in fact one more quest and three bonus bosses left. Thank you for RomeoPapa for reminding me!

Since the first of the bosses is only active on a rainy day, we take care of it right away. The Corrupted Mycoon can be found on an abbandoned farm north of Westcastle. It tries to poison our party and at the same time buffs its health and defense. With our usual spellcaster setup, we quickly decimate it by abusing its many weakpoint.

Now with that out of the way, we head to the elf village and find out that there had been a slave raid. Every elf except Meiriona and our orc friend from earlier have been abducted. Off we go to free them. In the dark caves, we find out that what we thought were slavers are in fact spiderlings pretending to be humans. We find an old journal with useful advice and head down into the darkness.

As our enemies, we face spider, spiderlings, ghosts and undead horror. The last ones are particulary annoying since they can dodge a lot of our magic and we brought a spellcaster setup. Mostly, we have to deal with poison and quick bursts of damage, nothing we can handle.

The real challenge in this dungeon is it's labyrinth-style layout and the fact that we can't see in the dark. Luckily, there is some help if we don't want to explore the whole place. On the first, half-dark floor, follow the skeletons for the quickest route. On the completely dark floor, always take the path without a pile of coins. We reach a narrow way further down, but some toxic gas prevents us from going deeper. We backtrack and find some moss that blocks the gas and allows us to go on. A quick statue-lever later, we find the elves, their capture, and our endboss.

The dark elf who kidnapped the elves from the village escapes and summons a large group of enemies: Some ghosts, some zombies and a few slimes, including a Primodial Slime that's supposed to be our main enemy. The ghosts and zombies quickly fall from our group damage, and then the Primodial Slime kills itself. Obviously not intended I'd say, and rather anti-climatic, since the fight is practically shorter than any of the fights in the dungeon.

We save as many elves as we can, get yelled at by Meiriona (who was supposed to protect her village, just saying) and get our mandatory victory scene.

It's text only and the background music doesn't change, so we still have this creepy-sad tune going which really kills it for me. Also, the very first thing that happens is a child getting raped by the Hero while her mother is telling her that it will be over soon. No thanks.

All in all, another nice addition to the growing background story of the game and some nice implications for further quests, including an unknown world named the "Underlurk" which sounds very promising, as well as some hints that there's more than just one kind of elves.

Vacation

Not really anything interesting happening here, but we need the last hidden note for the final bonus boss as well grab a few drinks for our last quest. Since we're here, we clear out the three dungeons that are, as far as I'm aware, still the same as before, including the loot you get. Once that's done, we progress the time by getting some more scenes for our collection, including Alina's and Orange Kid's with the new artstyle.

Day 63

Final day, final quest and two bonus bosses, supposedly the hardest in the whole game. Thanks again to RomeoPapa for telling me about those.

For the last quest, we had to the traveling caravan that's always near one of the cities on the world map. To trigger the quest, you need to bring an apple and give it to Holly, the catgirl. You can get apples at Penelope's old farm. After some dialogue, the trader offers you to pay you for each different drink you can bring him. Most of those drinks you get as random enemy loot drops, or you can buy them from different vendors. One mistake I did was that you always need more than one of each drink. If you only have one Fairy Wine, he won't take it from you, so buy at least two of each. There's a walkthrough in the Other Quests part, but here are the ones that gave me some trouble: Fairy Wine you'll get from the fairy vendor in the repeatable dungeon next to the elf village, she's still around even after you finish the quest. The Kraken can only be obtained from Alina's care packages, once they have been upgraded by getting Alina's relationship to 'trust'. Hurricane Rum can only be obtained on vacation island at the bar on the beach. And finally, Small Cider you'll only get in Lumberhill at the inn. Never would have thought to check there.

Now that our quests our done, we face the bonus bosses.

First, we head into the sewer where we killed our first rat, to kill another, bigger rat. The Rattus Maximus comes with bad-ass battle music and an insanely high life pool. It also regenerates 6000 health per turn, so we make sure we always have a debuff on it so that won't happen and keep it burned as far as possible. It also dishes out a lot of damage, which is why we try to keep its attack stat lowered at all times. Bronwyn with her ability to stack many debuffs on the boss is a superb addition to our party for this, while Kyrie and Yeon offer some extra damage as well as debuffs for the boss who's rather resistant to magic otherwise. Fire magic works best as it also applies Panic to the rat and prevents some extra actions from it. In the end it's a very long fight, but not too hard as long as you keep it from healing.

The next bonus boss can be summoned once we collected seven of the eight hidden notes. Only then will the 8th one appear and we get to face the Slenderman (if you know where to look, luckily RomeoPapa was around to tell me).

The Slenderman deals no damage to you at all, instead he rips open a time-space-rift and one of your party member simply vanishes. So effectively, you either kill him in four turns or you're done for.

I've been extremely luck in my first try, since he left Larelle alive who could dish out four turns of weakspot-double damage with buffed stats. The party members he kills off are random, so I only had a 4% chance of that happening. I was lucky, and killed him first try.

Since you only have a limited amount of turns, it's very important to use party members who don't need much setup. Larelle with her double-cast Eternal Nightmare is a good example for a heavy hitter from turn one on. Kyrie has a similar spell, sadly Slenderman is resistant to both her elements. Meline would be another party member with a double spell. Since Slenderman deals no damage at all, you should not bring a pure healer. Also, working with debuffs is pointless, since they don't deal enough damage in only four turns. In any ways, you'll always need a bit of luck as well, so that your heaviest hitter will survive longest.

And, that's it. 100% of the current game, finished.

Final thoughts

All in all, what's my conclusion after playing through every quest, fighting every enemy and finishing every dungeon?

I think out of 45 quests, there were two I didn't really like, but none of them was unplayable. Every other quest had something new that kept me going, either something new from the story to keep me interested, a new game mechanic to explore, a little twist that I didn't expect or simply, a well done mix of scenery and enemies without ever getting repetetive. That's awesome if you think about it. Instead of the usual quest grind, this game gives us something new with almost every quest and never gets boring.

Another big plus for the game are the different ways you can play the game. With the option to do a daily random quest, you can make some additional levels and make the game easier for you, as well as get some additional helpful items. You want more of a challenge? Simply skip the daily quest and see how you can deal with everything when you're underlevelled. The next thing that works in that way is the big pool of playable characters. I've settled on overpowered mages in Kyrie and Larelle who could abuse a lot of weakpoints in nearly any quest, along with Yeon who's not only a powerful healer but can build up a huge offensive potential by teaching her spell. However, that's only one way of many to play this game. You can literally pick just any character for your party, and you can still finish every quest of the game, although some setups can be more difficult, so again if you're looking for more of a challenge, just switch up your party setup.

Next, the characters and the story. Each character has its own personality, dialogues, scenes, background history, and even party banter with other characters. So much thought and work has gone into each character of our party and even side characters, I found myself just reading all the 'Chat' options from everyone more than once, especially since most of them change depending on where you are or what quest you finished last. The reward for raising your relationships with your followers are even more dialogue, new scenes and even more quests, which are all amazing. So yes, I want to find out more about my party members and the world they're living in. Even if it means I have to feed them daily gifts, which really is the only tedious part of the game for me. With more days to play, I guess that issue will solve itself with the passive-happiness system from the houses and furniture, but right now I feel I still have to do my daily gift rounds.

All of this is wrapped up in a nice old-school graphic style with nice ingame art sprinkled in between. I really like the new artstyle that's included more and more and replaces the 3D-art. On top of that, we have a great soundtrack that really manages to set up the mood, with only a handful of hiccups.

In conclusion: Did I have fun playing this game? You bet I did. Am I looking forward to the next update? You bet I am. Would I recommend anyone else give this game a try? Yes, definitely. Even if you're not into h-games in general, this game just convinces as a well done RPG with many fun elements that keep the game fun even after 20 hours of gameplay.