Damselbinder

I know I'm very late to the party on this one. I just rewatched it recently, so I thought I might as well give it my hot takes, because I think it sort of stands out as an odd middle-of-the-roader. It doesn't reach the heights, and it's not an execrable dumpster-fire - it sits in between them.

But by that I don't just mean that it's middle of the road, that wouldn't be worth talking about. It's a weird movie: not quite like anything else in its franchise, but not groundbreaking. I will say I appreciate the change of setting. Putting Spider-Man somewhere other than the States for the majority of the movie was a nice change of pace from other entries, and gives the film a degree of visual identity. Even though the first attempt at a solo Spider-Man movie crashed and burned, and the one after this was infinitely superior in about every respect, this one's become a bit lost in the shuffle.

I appreciate the film's focus on the romance between Peter and MJ. It can get a little cheesy in places, but I prefer it to the usual love triangle stuff Spidey's normally stuck with. It's a little bit old fashioned, actually: towards the end there's some full on princess-in-the-tower imagery as Spidey tries to save MJ from the bad guys.

My main problem with the film is that it spends quite a long time spinning its wheels. The plot is quite simple, really: our main bad guy wants to take Peter's powers for himself because he's old AF and his experiences in WW2 have made him terrified of death (I think?). He's got a machine that will do this, and the idea is he needs to snag Peter so he can suck out his bone marrow or something.

Now the thing is, there's a point towards the beginning of the film where our villain's minions have Peter basically at their mercy. He's even poisoned with a sort of robo-thingy to dampen his powers, and at that point I really don't know why they don't just grab him. But they need to act like there's more of a mystery than there is, even though the main villain (pulling the classic "I'm old and infirmed, I'm no threat to you honest" thing) announces that he wants Spidey's powers basically as soon as the film starts. So when he appears to die (kicking off a fucking inevitable series of Yakuza-confrontations because this is a Western movie set in Japan), it's really not too difficult to work out that he's very much still alive.

Frankly I think the film gets a bit lost here. The Yakuzas want to kidnap MJ because of some inheritance bullshit, but this turns out to be completely parenthetical to the plot. The main bad guy is alive, so ain't nobody inheriting nothing. It does lead to a good duel with the fellow who arranged the kidnapping, though, even though it was a bit weird to see Tom Holland going at it with a guy with a samurai sword.

Poor Spidey's having a difficult time of it internally, and I think that might have been my favourite aspect of the film. He's so not over the death of Liz Allan in the previous film that he's still having tragic-dead-wife-under-bedsheets flashbacks and hallucinations of her - they even got her actress back, which I hadn't expected. But Spidey's heart belongs to MJ now, so he sadly bids ghost-Liz a Spider-adieu.

The ending's a bit mad. Our baddie goes full Alastair Smythe and attacks Spidey in a big mech suit, and it's not the best action sequence ever, but it's entertaining enough, I guess. Though after falling in love with MJ over most of the film he just fucks off back to the States at the end so idfk.

I was genuinely taken aback by the mid-credits scene, if only because I was surprised that Willem Defoe and James Franco were willing to cameo in such a tiny role. Guess they paid 'em well, idk.

Our worlds are in danger. To save them we must discuss the Final Fantasy 8 characters. It is our mission.

Squall! Rinoa! Quistis! Irvine! Zell! Selphie! Transform and...

...go away. _______________________________________________________________________________

Dip #1: Squall Leonhart

Squall, Squall, Squall... what is there to say about you? There's a little more to him than literally nothing, but not a lot more. Squall is introduced to us as simply one of many prospective SeeD candidates, albeit one who's already being touted as especially skilled and powerful by SeeD standards. The stupid kid is only 17, and I guess that makes me a little more forgiving of some of his annoyances. He's very much designed to appeal to the teenage crowd as a handsome, misunderstood loner around whom ladies are still, inevitably, swooning.

Effectively the game revolves around his romance with Rinoa (more on her later). He's introduced to her at a post-graduation dance and is obviously rather smitten with her, though once he realises that she's running the world's shittest resistance movement he sours on her a bit. But she helps him to break out of his shell a bit, and by the middle of the game he's basically utterly devoted to her because... um... uhhh...

...he's a horny teenager and he's being dramatic?

Look the way it's supposed to work is this: Squall is an asshole (and I think the game does want you to think he's an asshole; the way characters react to his surliness is clearly meant to be negative). He basically confirms in internal dialogue that he does this deliberately, to push people away, because of his being traumatised by 1) being an orphan (actually... well, we'll get to that) and 2) because his onee-san got taken away when he was a little kid (for benevolent reasons as it turned out, but still) and that just made things worse. Add to that that he's been trained as a warrior since he was titchy AND his memory is all fucked up because, guess what, using Guardian Forces will slowly start to erode your memories and he's been using them since his early childhood, AND the only person to whom he appears to feel any attachment at all is Seifer - yes I understand why he might have some issues.

I'd say Squall is at his strongest when his (endless) self-reflections are actually challenging himself. There's one part where, once he realises he's starting to become deeply attached to Rinoa, he chastises himself because he prizes being independent and not relying on others, then angrily says "when the fuck have you ever NOT been dependent on others, you DIP", like he's never actually drunk his own kool-aid. The moments here or there where the role that destiny has thrust on him (because of a time loop rather than because of any intrinsic chosen-one qualities that he possesses, which makes his importance a bit more palatable), becomes genuinely frightening to him are maybe the nearest the game's script ever comes to originality. That his saccharine devotion to Rinoa ("Even if the world becomes your enemy... I'll be your knight..." ughhh I'm going to vom) could be read as the poor, stupid bastard latching onto someone out of a desperate need for comfort and affection... is... that's kind of interesting? But they never do anything with it. Squall's dickishness is presented critically; his 'love' for Rinoa never is.

I'll give him this. When he swallows his awkwardness and gives quite a good rousing speech to his fellow SeeDs (less of a "You feel GREAT - you can WIN - YOU CAN DO THIS AGGHHHH" and more of a "the holidays can be a tough time for families... boy, I'm right there with you") I warmed to him a little. It felt like a moment of genuine selflessness that was personally difficult for him. I... think I may have some sort of condescending fondness for Squall. He tries, bless him.

I like him more than Tidus, that's for fucking sure...

Dip #2: Rinoa Heartilly

She does not have a lot going on. She starts the story as basically a teenage activist who's way in over her head, and though she is praised for getting off her ass and actually putting her money where her mouth is, her efforts are presented as being so childishly incompetent that it's impossible to take her seriously. As the only permanent party member who's not a SeeD, I think there was potential for Rinoa to be something of an outside perspective, someone who'd be suggesting different solutions, maybe clashing with Squall, or Quistis (the next most likely to be determining what the party does, after Squall). She's not a pacifist; she's willing to take violent action to overthrow Galbadia, but she's not a mercenary trained all her life for violence either. In large part, however, this is just used early game to make her frightened of combat situations and cling to Squall's arm. She also does a few things early-game which really are just unfathomably stupid.

Mostly, Rinoa's role is to do the manic-pixie-dream-girl thing for Squall. I wouldn't say she's a straight example? She's got other things going on, has wishes of her own, but... more or less she's there for Squall to fall for. It's his story, she just lives in it. She is attracted to him, again, as far as I can tell just because she's hot. And since she apparently had a thing with Seifer at some point (I'm going to go throw up at your house.) I guess she just has a thing for emotionally damaged arseholes. There are moments where she's quite understanding with Squall? Like she seems to recognise that there's something genuinely wrong with him, and she patiently helps him to articulate his feelings (in general, not just about her or their romance), but I don't get what she gets out of him besides that he's handsome.

Oh, by the way, Rinoa is a sorceress. This is discovered about halfway through the game, and basically just serves to make her a damsel in distress - and no, not in a fun way - for the rest of the game. It doesn't give her any more power over the events of the story, it doesn't really seem to change her attitude to anything - it just turns her into a plot token that other sorceresses want to exploit. Eh, it gives her a good limit break, I guess.

You know what? When she and Squall actually smooch at the end I did think 'aww' for two seconds before The Bitterness™️ settled over me again.

Dip #3: Quistis Trepe

More like Quistis Tripe amirite eyyy lmao

Nah, but seriously, Quistis is the nearest thing FF8 has to a reasonable character. She's the Hermione, in that she's the smart one of the group without whom the rest of the party would be incapable of getting anything done. She's got a relatively fun attitude, there's an okay thing going on with her having a bit of a fear of failure after being a child prodigy, and of course she ALSO fancies Squall, though that one is quashed relatively early. She herself says she gave up when Rinoa came into the picture and she suspects that her feelings are more sisterly than romantic, after her GF-amnesia turns out to have made her forget that she was at Squall's orphanage too. In fact, so was everyone in the cast except Rinoa. And they all forgot.

It doesn't matter. It doesn't affect anything.

You know what, Quistis was close to being the only non-dip in the party, but she also does something terminally thick. In the middle of a high-profile assassination, she abandons her post, entirely to apologise to Rinoa for calling her plan stupid. It was stupid! Rinoa should feel bad! But not as bad as Quistis should feel for abandoning her post in the middle of an assassination!

Quistis' importance vanishes after the first disc of the game. I honestly think the orphanage plot might well have just been to give the other SeeD party members a scene later in the game where it feels like they matter, because they're contributing nothing past the first few hours. That's not a problem unique to FF8, it's all over RPGs, J or otherwise. I think FF9 handled it a lot better keeping more of the cast important. Even FF7 to some extent, though by no means will I pretend that Red XIII or Yuffie mattered very much once you hit disc 2.

Dip #4: Zell Dincht

Look at this gel-ass, dumbass, fingerless-glove-ass, tribal-tattoo-ass, hoverboard-ass, hyperactive-ass punch-man. You're looking at this picture and you already know everything you need to. The guy is an empty-headed dillhole with the combined intelligence of you and your mum. His biggest achievements in the game are getting his hoverboard confiscated off him 10 seconds after introducing it; being annihilated by the insult 'chicken-wuss'; and exposing SeeD on live TV as being behind the attempted abduction of the President of Galbadia an action which results in hundreds of deaths. The man is not smart.

You know what?

He's probably my second favourite character after Quistis. He's just such a relentless fucking idiot, and the other characters react to him with so little tolerance, and - critically - he is also frustrated by the idiocy of others (my heart sang when he yelled "SEIFER, YOU HUMAN PROFITEROLE" okay he might not have put it like that) so, idk. He's endearing.

Dip #5: Selphie Tilmitt

Selphie is not a character. I don't even know if the game is trying to pretend that she's a character. She's the closest the game has to a fanservice character with the outfit and the cutesy moe-shit, but - since FF8 is well written - she has a second character trait besides being all 'yaaay, school spirit' - she's also amusingly violent. Hoh hoh hoh, the small cute one is violent! Hoh hoh hoh!

She has one okay moment when a bunch of her friends get killed in a missile strike but I'm not going to give a character that many points for "her friends died and then she was sad." Next.

Dip #6: Irvine Kinneas

Irvine has absolutely nothing interesting going on. He's got a cowboy thing going, he wants to fuck Selphie, and that was basically it. He's the only one of the Orphanage Five that actually totally remembers their past... and since he never mentions it until everyone else knows, that doesn't matter either! The only way it affects the plot is that Irvine fucks up the assassination of Sorceress Edea because Edea was basically the Orphanage Five's mum. He's a prat. But his limit break - hoo wee that one kicks ass. So he's got that going for him. Hats off to you, you empty headed wannabe-chad.

Just your own hat, though. I'm not going to take my hat off for you.

Twat.

Dip #8: Laguna Loire

Laguna's an odd one. Basically he's the second most important character of the game, after Squall. He's just some random Galbadian soldier (but back when Galbadia wasn't a dictatorship) fighting in the Sorceress War against Adel's Esthar. He's sweet on this lounge singer (and no, a certain friend of mine, the fact that she's a lounge singer doesn't make her a worthwhile character) - or... lounge pianist anyway, and she's inexplicably sweet on him too. Even though when she invites him to her room he just rambles on incoherently about the dorky shit he's into.

Sigh...

Yeah, me too, bro...

Anyway Laguna is the viewpoint character of the flashbacks that Ellone periodically forces on the main party. Despite Julia, the lounge singer, being obviously pretty into him - and being inspired by him to write the most famous love song in the world (in-universe; the insipid and charmless Eyes on Me - yes it's bad, I understand music okay, I've listened not only to I'm Blue by Eiffel 65 but to the entire album from which it comes) - they never end up together. Given that Julia ends up marrying a general (and mothering Rinoa, in fact, not that that ever fucking matters), it seems to me like General Caraway sent Laguna on a special mission to Esthar to get him out of the way, King David style. Now that's how it's done! Put her there, General Caraway.

It turns out that part of the reason Ellone's flashbacks centre on Laguna is because he's personally attached to her past. After deserting the Galbadian army following his disastrous mission to Esthar, he wound up in this town called Winhill taking care of an orphaned Ellone. He raised her with a woman named Raine, and despite his journalistic wanderlust, he eventually decides that he wants to settle down. He and Raine get married, but before they can just be happy, Adel discovers Ellone's location, and has her taken to Esthar (you know, for the whole Ultimecia-plot-thing). Laguna, good boi that he is, journeys off to make the rescue. This goes surprisingly well as, not only does he rescue Ellone, but he overthrows Adel by tricking her into a stasis thingy using a ruse so petulantly simple it would make Dr Eggman blush. He doesn't go back to Winhill with Ellone because he gets caught up in the rebellion, and by the time he DOES go back, Ellone has been taken into hiding by the SeeDs, and Raine is dead. Laguna doesn't know - though it's implied he finds out later - that Raine was pregnant when he left. He's Squall's father.

They never bring it up. The two never exchange a meaningful line of dialogue. So who gives a fuck? Oooh Laguna and Julia never got together but their children managed to oooo it's so romantic no it isn't it's stupid.

Ultimate fucking dip to end all dips: Seifer Almasy

This dude.

How? How can you be a flamboyant rival, but I don't like you? This guy is maybe even stupider than Zell, and that takes some doing. He's Squall's arch-rival - they don't get on, they use the same kind of weapon, he's a recurring boss, etc., but at no point is he even faintly threatening. I don't especially think that he's meant to be that threatening? But with Edea being brainwashed, Adel having no dialogue, and Ultimecia only popping in at the absolute end of the game, Seifer is the villain we spend the most time with, and he spends his entire time doing stupider and stupider things.

1) He fails the SeeD exam (for the third time) because he's too impatient to follow a simple order, and has to run off and go kill-crazy.

2) He breaks out of SeeD's brig to interfere with Rinoa's plan (for which she has hired Squall and co.) to kidnap the president of Galbadia, combining forces with Zell to fuck absolutely everyone in the cast squarely in the pooper

3) He then decides to switch sides IMMEDIATELY because Sorceress Edea says he has a small dick

4) He then believes that he has become Edea's knight, which has apparently been his dream his entire life

5) He maintains his loyalty to her even when the crew beat the crap out of him

6) He feeds Rinoa to Adel even when he knows (I think?) that this is going to end the world.

And you know what? He faces no punishment for this, at all. The game ends with him laughing with his little goon squad. The only thing with Seifer that I like is that, right at the beginning, he and Squall are such maladjusted freaks that there is kind of a weird rapport between them even though they can't stop grousing at and insulting each other; like there's a grudging, Vince Vaughan to Will Ferrell style "I hate you but god damn it do I respect you" stuff going on.

Well that goes right out the window on Squall's part, at least.

Alright I'm done. I need a drink. Not an alcoholic drink, I'm just thirsty. What kind of monster do you think I am? I have work tomorrow, for god's sake. What, you want me to turn up hungover just because I finished writing a pointless character assassination for a 25 year old game? The rules that restrain other men mean nothing to you, I see.

Go and hang your head in shame.

Does anyone need this? Another person giving their opinions on this game? No. No-one needs this. I don't need this. Why am I doing it, then? Who can say? Certainly not you, as much as I know you want to. Don't try, please. You'll embarrass both of us.

Unlike Tales of Symphonia, about which I also rambled a few months ago, FF8 is not near or dear to my heart. Unlike its older brother, my beloved of beloveds FF7, or its hip younger sister FF9 which I also came to embrace relatively dearly, I took a long ass time to get to FF8, only having played the whole game for the first time very recently. So I'm just sort of going to give you my rambling first impressions of the experience.

First question: is it a good game? Uh... yeah, I think so. Just about. I always felt like I was having a good bit of fun with the actual gameplay; the narrative doesn't piss you about that much so there's a reasonable sense of progress. It wasn't tooth-grindingly difficult (which, in FF games, when they get like that tend to boil down to 'there is one optimum strategy that is nigh-mandatory to each encounter and you either know it or you don't') nor was it too easy (perhaps the one thing I'll give FF8 over its big brother is the difficulty scaling feels better to me). The story isn't... great, but it's reasonably engaging in an adolescent sort of way.

Part One: The World of Final Fantasy 8

FF8 follows FF7's lead in basically being modern fantasy, verging on sci-fi in places. There are trains, planes, guided missiles, jetpacks, robo-tanks, and the characters have access to online chatrooms and one of them (amusingly enough called 'Selphie') even blogs. In one area of the world there's higher sorts of technology - spaceships, hovercraft, ultra-high-tech weapons and so forth. Alongside that you've got witches, knights (sorta), summoned beasts and straight-up magic. It's a fun enough vibe I guess. The organization to which most of the heroes belong (SeeD - always written like that, for reasons that escape me) seem to be kind of a riff on the Jedi, but not 1:1 or anything. They're not protectors of peace and justice, they're mercenaries, that anyone can hire if they've got the dosh.

SeeDs are trained in 'Gardens' (geddit) which take in orphans at very young ages, training them to be elite warriors with access to unique magical powers. Instead of lightsabres, you have the 'gunblade', a ridiculous weapon where, when you pull the trigger, the weapon somehow hits more powerfully - a sort of vibroweapon thing. Instead of the force ('the force') it's Guardian Forces, FF8's term for Final Fantasy's usual suite of summoned beasts.

There are also nation-states, of a sort - generally city-states. There's the militaristic Galbadia, which provides most of the conflict early-game; the xenophobic and isolationist Esthar which becomes more and more important as the game goes on, as well as some towns like Balamb (your starter town, more or less) and Timber (occupied by Galbadia). Galbadia is a militaristic dictatorship, though its citizens seem to have... more or less normal lives.

...and then there are Sorceresses. It just seems to be a fact of life for the people of FF8 that, sometimes, women are just sorceresses, gaining the setting's only 'true' magic, and becoming extremely powerful. There are some myths and legends about them being descendants of a god called Hyne, but surprisingly this is left in the realm of myth. There may or may not be a Hyne, which I guess is cool because when I first ran across the myth I thought it was a big ol' plot point thunking. Sorceresses are treated with a mixture of reverence and fear by the people of FF8. It is stated outright that sometimes they're benevolent, and there's a sorceress is famous for being the champion of a small town being invaded by an aggressive empire. It is suggested that sorceresses' powers have a tendency to be corrupting, and that the service of a 'knight' can help them to avoid that. Regardless, most of the sorceresses we encounter, and indeed the game's main villain, are fuckers.

I will say that FF8 doesn't really do much very interesting with this concept. There are faint implications that sorceresses go bad because it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, and sorceresses suffer persecution, but we don't actually see this. Also, rather like FFXIII (the blackest of black sheep of the series), FF8 has an annoying tendency to keep information about the world locked into datalog things you can find around the world. Now I have no objection to games throwing in a bit of extra lore to flesh things out for treasure hunters, but a lot of what 8 keeps hidden is pretty essential information to knowing what's happening. What sorceresses are, what their history in this world has been, what the 'Sorceress War' the fallout of which drives the plot pretty hard was, etc. It makes the story seem a bit shallow, because the motives of the movers-and-shakers that the game directly presents you with rarely go past "muahahahahahahahaha".

Part 2: Mechanics

Remember the GFs, those summoned beasts I mentioned before?Though these beasts can be summoned directly for some sort of potent magical effect, their real strength gameplay-wise is that when you 'junction' (equip) them to a particular character, that character can then 'equip' (junction) magical spells to their stats. This is an evolution and abstraction, it seems to me, of FF7's materia system, where you equipped magical spells to your weapons or armour for various beneficial effects. In a way FF8 gives you more options, in the sense that you can now equip spells directly to any stat you want (once you've unlocked this option). This both works in ways you would expect (if I junction 100 poison spells to my status-defence, I become immune to the poison status; if I junction 100 ice spells to my elemental-attack, my physical attacks are now treated as doing ice damage), and ways that you would not (100 of the 'demi' spell provides a big boost to my attack stat). It's strangely abstract. Rather than having, as in FF7, an actual physical object that the characters are attaching to their weapons or armour, characters in FF8 just have spells absorbed into them. When you 'draw' magic from an enemy, fine, you can feel a kind of logic there. But when you refine 10 curagas from a tent you bought at a camping shop - what have you actually physically done? Where is the spell? How are you transferring and dividing these 10 curagas between party members?

I wouldn't complain this much about an abstraction for the sake of having some interesting mechanics, except that they dump you right the fuck in and it's a pretty steep learning curve. They're still giving you tutorials seven hours into the game. Nonetheless, once you get the hang of it, it's a fun enough system. One of the things I like in an RPG is when there's a constant sense of progress - that's another thing I think FF8 has over FF7. 7 really holds back the most interesting spells until waaaaaaaaaaay late in the game, and your magic takes fucking ages to level; whereas in 8 there's always a bajillion skills and shit you're in the process of learning; you run across one new spell and bam you've tripled your magic stat or whatever.

As to the 'drawing magic' question which I know is a standard bugbear - yeah, fair. It didn't bother me too much, but I've got a modern version where you can turn on triple speed, so for people playing it back on the PS1, yeah, I can imagine that shit getting pretty tedious. For those not in the know, you can perform a command to obtain a limited quantity of a given magic spell (magic has numerical ammunition in this game, rather than costing MP), and despite the various conveniences you acquire over the course of the game like refining magic from items and t r a d i n g c a r d s, drawing magic is always the primary way you have of getting more. It's a bit boring.

I'd say a problem I have more than the magic drawing is that you are serious disincentivised from actually using magic. Because you have a finite quantity of magic, and magic spells boost stats, and because higher quantities of those spells boost them more powerfully, and because the more potent and useful spells provide better boosts, you really don't want to use too much magic, because it'll weaken your characters. Only the absolute most powerful and useful magic, like aura (instantly allows use of limit breaks regardless of health) and triple (lets you use three spells at once, for the cost of only one if you've got the right skill) is worth using by the last quarter of the game. By the end, you're almost exclusively reliant on spamming aura and mullering enemies with the limit breaks of physical hard-hitters like Squall or Irvine. Even summoning you're discouraged from relying on (that's a way of using magic that doesn't use up any resources) because the final boss will insta-kill any summon you try to use. I guess that's only one fight, but still.

Part 3: Plot

I'm not going to go in the order the game presents things here, to make everything a bit simpler.

In the far future lives a sorceress named Ultimecia. She's a mean ol' witch, and I think she's trying to rule the world or something. She's fucking pissed that the English localisation romanised her name as a bunch of video-game-y nonsense as opposed to the more elegant 'Artemisia' which would maintain the frequent lunar-theming of a lot of the major elements of the game. Not only that, but because of some time loop shit that we'll go into in a second, she knows that she is destined to be slain by a 'legendary SeeD' named Squall. In the world of FF8, it is impossible to alter events by using time travel, or whatever, so Ultimecia knows that she's boned, basically. The only thing that she figures that she can do is to 'compress time' - to turn all of time into one, eternal moment in which she - being a powerful sorceress - will be the only being to continue to exist. The time in which she's killed by Squall will, then, just never happen because time will cease to exist, or at least will cease to advance.

With me so far?

In order to do this, Ultimecia must exist at multiple points in time simultaneously. There is not, apparently, any way for a being to do this physically. All Ultimecia can do is to send her mind back in time to previous generations of sorceresses. If she goes back far enough, time will compress. She can go back to some extent using a device called 'Junction Machine Ellone', invented by an Estharian scientist named Odine by studying the brain patterns of the eponymous Ellone, a young woman who just... has the power to send people's minds back in time for some reason. But the machine can't mimic Ellone's powers that well, so Ultimecia can't go back far enough to do time compression. For this reason, she has to possess a sorceress in the era in which Ellone lives (the 'present' relative to our main characters), find Ellone, force her to use her powers to send Ultimecia's mind even further back in time, and then time compression will be able to take place.

To this end, Ultimecia possesses the mind of a sorceress named Edea. She uses Edea to gain political power in the nation of Galbadia, so that she can use Galbadia's resources to free another sorceress, Adel, from confinement in a big prison in space. I... don't know why the Adel step is necessary frankly, but it may have something to do with the fact that Adel is more powerful than Edea - so powerful, in fact, that until 17 years prior to the game's events, Adel was the ruler of Esthar, the most powerful nation in the world, before being deposed by Estharians and sealed in a thingy in space.

Despite some interference from SeeD (including Squall himself), Ultimecia is largely successful. A wrench is thrown in her plans when the SeeDs defeat Edea and seem to force Ultimecia out of her, but she simply possesses a brand-new sorceress named Rinoa. The SeeDs, aware of Ellone's importance, have been keeping her hidden away for years, but eventually Ultimecia is able to find and capture her. Having transferred Edea's and Adel's powers into Rinoa, Ultimecia possesses her again, and uses Rinoa to use Ellone to begin the process of time compression. Reality starts to fall apart, as all eras meld confusingly into one, like that one episode of Dr Who with ancient Roman Winston Churchill.

Neither that episode, nor FF8, pull this off particularly well.

Still, comparisons to the writing of Steven Moffat aside, Ultimecia's plan works. Unfortunately, she did a bit of a fucky-wucky, because she created the one situation in this world's time travel rules where a person can physically travel from one era to another. Squall shows up at the door of her futuristic... medieval castle, and along with five buddies (weren't you...) kicks Ultimecia's teeth in.

With Ultimecia fatally wounded, the time compression begins to unwind, and both Ultimecia and Squall wind up in the relative past, at a time when Squall was a little child in an orphanage - an orphanage run by a pre-sorceress Edea. Squall accidentally reveals his identity to Edea, and puts the idea for an organization of elite warriors trained to fight and defeat sorceresses into her head. Ultimecia, apparently compelled to pass her powers on before she dies (I assume she must have this compulsion or I don't know why she'd give a shit about passing things on to the next generation), and passes them to Edea, making her a sorceress in the first place. Squall is then able to return to his own time.

Edea marries a man named Cid. She gives him the information given to her by the future Squall, and together they found the Gardens, and SeeD, to bring about the conditions where Squall will lead his fellow SeeDs to destroy Ultimecia, and close the time loop that ensures her defeat. Wouldn't you know it, Ellone is one of the orphans at Edea's orphanage as well, so she's able to hide her on a special ship crewed by 'White SeeDs', while Squall and many of the other orphans (including most of the main cast) all end up as part of SeeD. Ultimecia played herself.

So a semi-fun time travel plot, basically, but this is not what the game really focuses on. Final Fantasy 8 is a love story, and unfortunately it's a love story between two pretty vacuous people. Weird how I was able to explain the whole plot with scarcely any reference to any of the main cast beyond Squall, eh? Doesn't bode well, does it? Stay tuned for part two: characters.

I'm going to make a sandwich, go into a dark room, and eat it, while staring into silence.

Our worlds are in danger. To save them we must discuss the Tales of Symphonia characters.

Okay I'm going to go in a weird order here but there's method to my madness and if you don't like it well look down uh-oh motherfucker there's a trapdoor beneath you uh-oh you're in Swanage now, have fun

Lloyd Irving; VA: Scott Menville; Seiyuu: Katsuyuki Konishi

Lloyd is the hero of our story. As the last post indicated, Lloyd is a big dum-dum. But it's to a purpose. I think he goes through a pretty convincing boy-2-man journey. Lemme break it down. A bit of a theme of ToS is that everyone fucks up, and the point is not never to fuck up - because you will at some time - the point is to be able to recognise your mistakes and make up for them, or at the very least try to change tack on the way you do things if it's not working. Well if that's gonna be a theme, you've got to give your hero a big fuck-up - and they do. Lloyd manages to get his hometown... not entirely destroyed, but a bunch of people die and shit because he did something stupid. This hangs over him all the way through the game, which I appreciated. Even right at the end of the game, he's still bringing it up in skits, and there's a couple of pretty good moments where he has to explain what happened to newer party members that don't know what the deal is.

Lloyd is a relatively typical shonen hero. He wants to traaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiin to get stroooooooooooongeeeeeeeeer and stuff; he's a big eater; he's book-dumb; but he has a heart of gold. Still, he's a bit more thoughtful and reflective than your typical Goku or Boruto or Cockroach-tan. He has a few moments of genuine moral hand-wringing which I think work pretty well. For example, when the party figure out that the Chosen thing is bullshit, most of them are actually still willing to let the ritual happen. Most of them knew Colette was going to die from the start (Lloyd pointedly didn't), and besides - Sylvarant is in a fucked up state. Are they really going to let its people suffer? And though Lloyd goes hero-mode and charges in to save his childhood friend and probably love-interest, you know what? For a second he really considers it. He even says so later in a memorable skit where he chews himself out for being a hypocrite. I also appreciate that they don't frame Lloyd's refusal to let Colette sacrifice herself as out of his feelings about her particularly, but mostly because he's appalled by a system that makes sixteen year old girls sacrifice their lives to a fake goddess.

Indeed, once he gets to Tethe'alla (after a bit of irritating putzing about), Lloyd actually seems to have turned this into a real principle: he wants to make a world where people don't get sacrificed. Does that mean no-one's ever going to suffer or die? Hell no, but it means that people don't get treated like commodities that exist for the convenience of the powerful. Hell, he even extends his compassion to the summon spirits, who are otherwise just plot tokens. This moment in his development is bookmarked with Lloyd beating up Yuan in a fight shortly afterward, this being the first time that the party actually take on one of the big movers and shakers of this world and win rather than getting stomped or running away.

Lloyd isn't exactly a resident of Iselia at the start of the game. He goes to school there, but he lives just outside it with his adoptive father, Dirk, a dwarf. This seems to serve partly to make him an orphan who can discover the - oh I'm sorry I just yawned and I don't understand why - mysteries of his origins; and partly to sort of take him out of normal human society a bit, so he's not exposed to the usual prejudices and he thinks everyone's racism is stupid. Ngl, sometimes his way of expressing this is a little trite, but mostly it works.

Even Mithos, the main villain, against whom Lloyd expresses plenty of rage (because he is still just a rat in a cage) gets some sympathy. When Lloyd is finished beating (clap) him up, he laments: "You could have lived with us in our world", then adds a quiet "damn it" which Scott Menville delivers really well. Overall I think the Japanese voice cast turn in better performances than the English cast (though it's close), but Menville-san does a really bang-up job as Lloyd; adds a lot to the character that I sometimes miss when playing the game in Japanese.

Lloyd seems to exert a subtly magnetic effect on the rest of the party. Basically every member comes to see him as having radically changed their lives and helped them with their issues in some way. Sometimes this falls a little flat (I don't really know why Presea sees Lloyd in particular as having helped her out of her jam but fuck it he's the hero) but mostly it works? I think the idea that he's generally such a compassionate guy and his idiocy allows him to look past social conventions and whatever makes him very earnest in a way that has quite an effect on the other characters. In fact, Tales of Symphonia has a fairly intricate relationship system, where the character that has the most affection points with Lloyd will have unique scenes with him, and take a more central role towards the back end of the story. I will, therefore, return to Lloyd as I go through the other characters, because much of their deeper characterisation comes out through their close interactions with Lloyd. And no-one is affected more by this than...

Kratos Aurion; VA: Cam Clarke; Seiyuu: Fumihiko Tachiki

Kratos is presented to the party as a mercenary, who joins the Chosen's quest for money and out of an enlightened self-interest. "Of course I want to save the world," he says. "I live in the world." He is a much better swordsman than Lloyd at first, so he takes on a bit of a mentor role to the young buck, educating him in swordsmanship, and gently reminding him that he sux lmao every hour or so of gameplay. As the party travel through Sylvarant, Kratos repeatedly recommends the most pragmatic, direct route to completing their mission, though he's not utterly heartless. He seems to know a lot about a lot - to a suspicious extent for a common merc - to the point where the only other non-idiot in the party, Raine, knows something is up, but naturally doesn't have the context to guess what he could be hiding.

Because, yes, Kratos is a big, stinky liar. In fact, he's an Angel of Cruxis, one of the Four Seraphim, in fact (just Mithos' fancy name for himself and his four companions). As far as I can tell, he's been dispatched to look after this journey because the Renegades have killed so many previous Chosens, and Sylvarant has been on the ass-end of the system for too long.

For a while Kratos plays an enigmatic role. Even in the scene of his betrayal, he privately expresses relief that Lloyd didn't die, and when he occasionally appears to say "harrumph" at the party, he's often offering some sort of guidance. Eventually it becomes clear that Kratos is straight-up working to betray Mithos, and fully intends to help you overthrow him, and he comes good towards the end of the game, where he provides Lloyd the means to wield the Important Sword, which he has been preparing for during the entire back half of the game, pretty much.

Now - what I don't know is when he decided to do this. Kratos, as I mentioned last time, is in fact Lloyd's biological father and no doubt that influenced him a great deal. At the start of the game he doesn't know this, but he confirms later on that he figured it out when he found Lloyd's mother's grave, which happens very early in the game. So I'm guessing it was at some point after he betrays the party that he decided to turn against Mithos, and at some point he contacts Zelos (Tethe'alla's Chosen of Mana) to assist him in his endeavours, but I don't know when. There's some indication that he's been plotting to betray Mithos since before the entire game, but I think I might have just misinterpreted some of Zelos' explanations so I'm not sure.

What is clear is that Kratos helped Mithos establish the system governing the worlds (playing a crucial role, in fact, as the seal on a particularly important summon spirit), and for 4000 years or so just sorta vibed. He says that after not too long he'd already come to think that Mithos' system was bullshit, but Mithos kept promising that once Martel was resurrected, he'd fix the world, and Kratos let himself believe it. Given that Martel's resurrection absolutely requires the sacrifice of an innocent person (indeed, many innocent persons, given how many Chosens failed to provide a suitable body), Kratos seems to have been willing to put up with a lot of evil shit. Apparently pre-angel he was Mithos' mentor and teacher, and basically felt so bad for the stupid kid that he went along with his nonsense. So Kratos has a lot to make up for and the game doesn't pretend otherwise - again with the theme of heroes fucking up bad before they realise what's good. In Kratos' case, he'd become so jaded with humanity and elfanity and half-elfanity that he went FULL HOBBES and thought Mithos' totalitarianism was the only way to keep the peace.

Another odd little parallel that the game keeps up between Lloyd, Kratos, and another character I'll talk about in a second, is that Anna (Kratos' gf; Lloyd's mother; currently as dead as YOUR sense of humour) had that thing where her exsphere got removed and she became a mon-starr, and Kratos was forced to kill her to protect babby Lloyd. The heartbreak he felt from this basically broke his spirit and made him run back to Mithos (he'd told him to go fuck himself and then peaced out hence shacking up with a random human lady in Sylvarant, but w/e) then go back to the Big Tower with his tail between his legs. It just so happens that Lloyd also has to kill an innocent woman (more Genis' friend than his, but w/e) right at the beginning of the game in more or less the same situation. And just to twist the knife in further, this lady's granddaughter finds out about what Lloyd did at a really bad moment (in fact said granddaughter, Chocolat, behaves like a moron, but w/e) and Lloyd goes like:

Point is, what broke Kratos and made him give up on trying to be a better person (and in fact seriously backslide) is what steels Lloyd's determination never to be such a dumbass again. There's a bit of a theme going on that, as Kratos is Lloyd's mentor in swordsmanship and how not to be a fucking idiot, Lloyd is unknowingly mentoring Kratos in how not to be a cunt. I like it. It gives more of a mutual humanity to their relationship with each other - they actually have some quite sweet moments in the version of the story where Kratos fully rejoins you at the end of the game. In the other versions, Kratos is too wounded from his final duel with Lloyd to be able to help in the final fight (I guess in the version of the story where they already had a heart-to-heart, Lloyd pulled his punches a little), though I'll talk more about that when I get to Zelos.

What I don't like is that, at the end of the game, Kratos is just like 'oh I have to go now' and stays on Derris Kharlan as it floats off into space. His only justification is "if a half-elf of Cruxis remains here, the other half-elves will have no place to live." Okay, matey: 1) What the hell kind of logic is that, most people don't even know about Cruxis how is that going to make life any worse for half-elves 2) Did you forget that you're not a half-elf you pillock

Anyway, whatever. Kratos is mostly cool. Cooler than you, anyway.

Regal Bryant; VA: Crispin Freeman; Seiyuu: Akio Otsuka

"Eh?" I hear you say, in that tone of yours, you know the one, "Regal third? Yeah Lloyd and Kratos first and second make sense - but shouldn't it be Colette next, or maybe Genis? Zelos even, since you keep mentioning him?"

Well your rage has become so shrill that I couldn't hear the last third of that sentence it was so high pitched. I'm doing Regal third for a reason - you'll see.

Regal is the very last playable character introduced to the player. He turns up in a pretty awkward period of the game's story, where the party get on the bad side of the Tethe'allan authorities entirely so that there is an antagonistic force pursuing them during a period of the game where Cruxis isn't actively hunting them (though lord knows they should be). Regal shows up on the instructions of the Pope (Pope's too busy to do it himself, he's jamming out to Megalovania), to kidnap Colette (I won't go into why, there's no point, this plot doesn't fucking go anywhere). When he sees Presea in the party, however, Regal decides to stay with the party and help them out. No-one knows what his connection to her could be (and he denies any), but Zelos figures him out pretty quicksmart.

Turns out this guy is a duke, and the president of the biggest corporation in Tethe'alla. So he's both an aristocrat and a member of the 1% so I should hate him, but he's a decent enough guy. Oh no but wait he's a convicted criminal - for murder, in fact.

Except it's not a murder. Regal acts like it is, but it isn't. See, he was in a mon-starr situation as well like Lloyd and Kratos (that's why I'm doing him third, you see, you see, you see?!!!?!?) with his gf, Alicia. Ngl, I do not know how the fuck this went down. Okay, the way it's presented is this:

- Alicia works for Regal as like his maid or something. They start porking. That's pretty sus already, but w/e.

- Regal's manservant George, in his own words, "interfered, and forced them apart." Uh... how? George is a servant. Regal's the richest man in the world, and a duke. If he wanted to keep porking his maid, I think he could have kept porking his maid. And the way Regal plays it is that he was head over heels for Alicia, so I don't understand why he didn't tell George to go fuck himself. Like - fucking fire her as your maid and then get married or whatever. Do you want to prevent a scandal? You're the richest man in the world, who gives a fuck?

- Then Alicia is "handed over" to some asshole named Vharley so he can use her in an exsphere experiment. How the fuck did that happen? Vharley's just some chump! Okay, I think he has the backing at this point of this Desian fucker called Rodyle (a man who introduces himself as "the most cunning of the Desian Grand Cardinals" what an asshole) but how the hell did Regal let this happen? Even if Vharley had the backing of the Pope at this point, Regal was one of the most powerful and important men in the WORLD. He couldn't have kicked up a stink about this? He couldn't have just refused to let this happen and told Vharley to go suck a lemon?

- The experiment goes wrong (it works with her sister Presea, as we'll see) and Alicia is given back to Regal - but as a mon-starr! In fact, now that I think about it, Regal seems to pay Vharley some sort of ransom for her... which means he did want to get her back... but why did he have to do that? Couldn't he have gone to the king like "hi I'm a duke and pay more tax money than ten billion peasants combined and this chump has just demanded that my girlfriend be put into a dangerous science experiment can we maybe NOT let that happen". Anyway, Regal comes up and slams, and welcomes Alicia to the jam.

So Regal is left a broken man by this, a bit like Kratos. Okay, there's some resonance here. I see what you're going for. But let's be clear here: the incomprehensibility of the situation aside, Regal was acting in self defence. More than that, Alicia was begging him to kill her 'cause she didn't want to be a mon-starr. He is not a murderer. So the whole theme of the heroes making grave mistakes and whatever is borked here super hard. Regal, buddy, I like you, and you whip up a mean pescatore (fr) but none of your shit makes sense.

Presea Combatir; VA: Tara Strong; Seiyuu: Houko Kuwashima

Makes sense to talk about Presea here since I just talked about Regal. Like Regal, Presea is largely irrelevant to the main plot, and actually prolly could have been dropped without losing much. Like I've said, she was in an exsphere experiment which halted her growth and put her in a sort of trance until the party fix her. Once this happens, she regains her sense of self (in one of the nastiest scenes in the game, she realises that her father's desiccated corpse has been lying in his bed for the past decade right when her mind gets fixed), and spends the rest of the game trying to recover her humanity.

I like Presea well enough. I'm pretty fucking suspicious of any character who's like "oh I look 12 but actually I'm 28" but... idk, they never do any fanservice stuff with her, so idk. She has a lot of nice moments with the rest of the cast (and she dunks on a crushing Genis every day, making me like her all the more), but there's not much to say about her. Other than that I think Houko Kuwashima does a much better job than Tara Strong at playing her with this shellshock that still has pretty raw emotion from time to time. Tara Strong just sort of... does a voice actor voice? I'm not sure how else to describe it. Just "I'm a character in a videogame." Idk.

Genis Sage; VA: Colleen O'Shaughnessy; Seiyuu: Ai Orikasa

Genis is an annoying little dweeb, basically. Even though the massacre at Iselia is waaaay more his fault than Lloyd's, he's more or less content to let Lloyd carry the guilt of that one. Prat. He's Lloyd's childhood pal, black mage, and he's supposed to be a genius, but uhhh... you know that meme of Jimmy Neutron going "'salt'? um actually I think you mean sodium chloride" and the other guy correcting him on not only being a pedant but a stupid and incorrect pedant? Yeah Genis is basically that.

Anyway, Genis is a half-elf, and his more interesting moments are where we see that he's actually developed a pretty nasty attitude to humans. Given that he also has a much more level-headed sister who keeps his BULLSHIT in check, he's clearly meant to be a bit of a parallel to Mithos. That's made even clearer when he actually befriends Mithos, who disguises himself as his younger self to befriend the party and deceive them so that he can... uhh...

...Actually to this day I don't know why Mithos does this, other than so that the party can have more of a personal relationship with him so that his end boss fight hits harder. Anyway point is he strikes up a friendship with Genis that appears mutually genuine, because even as Yggdrasill, Mithos at one point defends Genis from harm (cluing the little fucker in). But other than a bit of "we're not so different, you and I", this doesn't go interesting places. I don't know, it's fine, and it does help to make Mithos' deception sting a bit, but the whole 'Genis could be like Mithos' thing isn't deeply explored. I guess it's part of the theming that, yes, horrible discrimination and persecution can have poisonous effects on a person's psyche.

Raine Sage; VA: Kari Wahlgren; Seiyuu: Yumi Toma

I like Raine a fair bit. She's definitely the Spock of the group, but like Spock she has a cast-iron core of moral rectitude that keeps the party on the straight and narrow during trying times. She's also the group's Hermione, in the sense that none of them would be able to get fucking anything done without her assistance. She's not only the history buff, but the computer whizz, the language expert, and often the party's negotiator and 'face'.

But in terms of importance to the plot, Raine gets kind of shafted. There's a sequence focusing on her where it's revealed that she (though introduced to us at the beginning of the game in Sylvarant) is from Tethe'alla. It also does an annoying thing where this is supposed to 'explain' why she's so obsessed with archaeology - the ruin she was searching for was actually the mysterious spot where she was transferred from Tethe'alla to Sylvarant by her deadbeat parents oh hey my ass just died I wonder why

Raine (and Genis) interestingly are not only half-elves, but are the only half-elves that meet that definition literally, as in one parent is a human, and one parent is an elf. This is never gone into that much except when we actually meet their mother in the floating city of Exire, who has gone crazy out of guilt for abandoning her children. That never goes anywhere either. Huh.

Raine has a strange relationship with Lloyd, ngl. At the start she seems barely able to tolerate his blunderings, and is naturally keener on him when he starts behaving less like a human profiterole - but in their heart-to-heart that you unlock by having the highest relationship value with Raine... the scene comes off to me as awfully romantic. And given that she very much treats him like a stupid child (which he is) for most of the game, that comes off a bit... icky to me.

Colette Brunel; VA: Heather Hogan; Seiyuu: Nana Mizuki

I don't know about Colette, man. She's the Chosen one, and if you're not making a particular effort, the likely candidate to be Lloyd's love interest. Certainly the beginning third of the game implies a romance between them fairly heavily. She's not an interesting character. Basically you've got a lot going on similar to Yuna from Final Fantasy X: she's been raised knowing that her destiny is to sacrifice herself for the good of the world, and this has left her with a completely self-effacing, overly selfless personality. She does not value herself at all except insofar as she is the Chosen, and when she finds out about Cruxis being evil fuckers, and the party say "hey Colette maybe don't flop over and die for these bastards", Colette accepts it because even she - dumbass though she is - understands that Cruxis is evil and no good can come of serving their ends. But she still, as we see, feels guilty about doing this, and basically feels that she's betrayed everyone in the world even though rationally she knows that the whole Chosen thing is bullshit. I mean that can't help her self-esteem much either: her entire society has venerated her as the Chosen, the most important person in the world, and then she finds out the whole thing is a scam. That's gotta fuck with you, eh?

See that sounds pretty good, doesn't it? There's a lot to dig into there. But the game never really does. You see this in some skits, and they go into it a little more in Colette's heart-to-heart with Lloyd, but Colette never gets any interesting dialogue or anything, or really gets to explore this shit beyond the most surface level stuff. The best example I can think of is a skit she has with Raine when the party first return to Sylvarant after their sojourn in Tethe'alla, where Colette suddenly feels horrible because the party have been so caught up in their attempts to save her and to foil Cruxis that she basically forgot about the suffering of the people of Sylvarant, and Raine gently comforts her and reminds her that foiling Cruxis will help Sylvarant too; but tbh that's more a good scene for Raine than for Colette. Her role in the story is so, so, so passive, even though if you'd swung things round a little bit Colette could very well have been the hero. Making her "I was the Chosen but now I don't want to be the Chosen but who the fuck am I if I'm not the Chosen oh god am I letting everyone down agghhh" thing the centre of the game's emotional throughline could have been pretty good, but in the end Colette is a victim, and never really takes charge at any point in the story. She's a victim of Cruxis; then she's a victim of Rodyle ("the most cunning of the Desian Grand Cardinals!"); then she's a victim of this stupid disease; then she's a victim of Mithos; then potentially she's a victim of Mithos again when he bodyjacks her in 2/8 endings of the game. There was something here, but Colette is too uwu and moe and whatever for it to mean anything. Next.

Sheena Fujibayashi; VA: Jennifer Hale; Seiyuu: Akemi Okamura

Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan I really like Sheena. Like, I really like Sheena. She's introduced to the party as an assassin trying to assassinate Colette because she doesn't want Tethe'alla to get fuckus, but because she's bae she can't go through with it, especially since she sees how fucked up Sylvarant is getting.

She's the first indication to the party that something bad is going down with this whole Chosen thing, and she shakes up the group dynamic pretty nicely. She's the right combination of tough, sweet, determined and amusing that makes her really endearing - though there's this annoying, very Japanese thing of some characters being like "huh because you're not a complete drip I don't think of you as feminine!" but that's I guess external to Sheena herself. Harrumph.

Sheena escapes the fate of a lot of the early-game characters by continuing to remain important throughout. Her summoning abilities become pretty important to the plot, and we find out about her heroic failure (see, there it is again! HYOOUUUGGHHHH), when she wasn't able to make a pact with a particularly surly spirit as a young'un, and it retaliated by killing about 1/3 of the population of her village. She even has some of that outcast thing going on, because she's not native to her village, and was adopted by them - not only that, but her summoning powers mean she must have some elven ancestry, so she was treated a little distantly by a lot of people in her village. It's not gone into too much, but it gets a couple of the right beats for the game's theming.

Of the two-maybe-three characters whose relationship with Lloyd is explicitly romantic, Sheena's works the best. The two of them have a character dynamic that's actually fun (idiot and not-idiot-but-still-slightly-more-of-an-idiot-than-she-thinks-she-is, as opposed to Lloyd and Colette's 'halfwit-and-babby'); and it's obvious from pretty early on that Sheena's crushin'. When after a whole game of Lloyd ignoring her hints, Lloyd finally gets it, Sheena gets all excited and giggly and it's just nice okay, let me have this

Zelos Wilder; VA: Shiloh Strong; Seiyuu: Masaya Onosaka

I have a very soft spot for Sheena, but brother man I love Zelos. In my view he's the most interesting character in the entire game, and he's just a really fun time. He comes across like this spoiled, flirty asshole... and that's exactly what he is, but they do a good job of breadcrumbing his more hidden depths. For instance, there's a scene where the party are observing a structure powered by huge numbers of exspheres, and Colette goes, "ew, gross", and Zelos rather quietly says "I'm not sure it's appropriate to describe them in that way, given what they are" which is the first time he shows a capacity to take anything seriously.

Another interesting aspect of Zelos is his attitude to his position as Chosen of Tethe'alla. First off we see him comparing himself to Colette, and though at first he seems to be making fun of her for taking her duties so seriously, the conversation shifts to Zelos actually being astounded - even a little jealous - that Colette is such a Chosen's Chosen, whereas Zelos is a shiftless bum. But just like Colette, Zelos' self-worth is entirely tied to this title, only in his case that relationship is more complicated. He hates being the Chosen - partly out of genuine laziness and because he doesn't want the hassle - and partly because he wants his half-sister Seles to be the Chosen instead, which she also definitely wants. Basically his mother got murdered by Seles' mother when she was trying to kill Zelos so that her daughter could be the Chosen instead, and Zelos is carrying all kinds of fucking guilt about that.

And then he meets Lloyd. At first he basically ignores him as a country bumpkin (which he IS) until Lloyd gives the big speech which gets him the 'gentle idealist' title (no really), and Zelos is like "wait is this guy actually for real" and spends a bit of time sort of poking Lloyd to see if he really is as honest as he seems. The skits switch from "okay no really though" to "ah but of course you must hate ME, right", like he keeps badgering Lloyd to admit that actually he doesn't trust him as much as the rest of the party, and actually he doesn't like him how he likes the others... but Lloyd does. Zelos is one of his companions, and hell if Lloyd can put up with Genis, he can put up with Zelos. Lloyd's earnestness and ability to value Zelos as a person, not more or less because of his status, is basically the one speck of human kindness that Zelos has been desperate for all his life. In his bestie-scene with Lloyd, he is just stunned that he has made an actual human connection with someone, and even in the sequel where they make it seem like Lloyd has turned evil (OH YEAH SURE) and even his old party are suspicious of him, Zelos is the only one who's like "yeah no bullshit, Lloyd is tighter than my ass, there's no way he's bad."

In most endings, we find out that Zelos has been scheming behind the scenes with Kratos for a good long time. The two of them made a pact together to find a way to allow someone to wield the Important Sword, and though Zelos appears to be betraying the party to Cruxis and the Renegades (weighing all sides to see which comes through for him), actually it was all part of their keikaku, meaning Zelos knew a lot more than he was letting on for most of the game. I assume Kratos realized that Zelos hated the whole Chosen thing, and that he would hardly have a better ally in trying to eliminate the system that requires them.

In most endings of the game, right before the fake betrayal, Lloyd - who has realised that Zelos' behaviour is really, really suspicious - very pointedly takes Zelos aside and says "I trust you." This stuns Zelos, and seems to influence him pretty strongly. During the fake betrayal, he even does a cool thing where he says to Lloyd: "Did you forget what I said in Flanoir? I side with the strongest." Except Zelos didn't say that in Flanoir, he said it in Mizuho, what he said in Flanoir was "just trust me, put your faith in me". It's based. Zelos is also the only one who really calls Kratos out for the runaround he's given Lloyd and what a crappy parent he's been and so on. Epic and based.

But this is the thing. Kratos and Zelos cannot (except for one small interlude) be in the party together at the same time. In 7/8 endings, you get Zelos. In 1/8 endings, you get Kratos. And in the Kratos version, Lloyd doesn't say "I trust you" before the fake betrayal. He says "Can I really trust you?" And this, apparently, leaves Zelos so broken up, that he decides to betray the party for real. You have a boss fight with him, and you kill him. Straight up. He dies. He's the only PC who can die in any ending of the game.

But it gets worse than that. In a scene that is very, very hard to get, just before this we see Zelos communicate with Kratos, where he says to Kratos that he intends to go through with the plan, but he no longer has any interest in seeing it to the end. He doesn't try to betray you for real and fail; he basically commits suicide-by-cop while still setting the party up to win in the end. Ouch.

Uuuuuhhh okay I've run out of things to talk about bye

Okay so I just finished playing the ToS remaster on the Switch (first off how the fuck did they butcher the performance that badly this game came out in 2003 ffs) and since this is one of my favourite games I thought I'd just kind of... I don't know sort of give off a stream of thoughts and musings about the game's ideas and characters and such. Imagine it like this: I'm one of the Ghostbusters (perhaps one of the Extreme Ghostbusters), my opinions are the stream coming out of the proton pack, and you are the kitchen I'm trashing with my poor aim.

Basic Summary of the Plot So I am Going to Spoil Everything and You Must Die

Tales of Symphonia is an action RPG originally released for the Gamecube. It takes place in the same fictional universe as the earlier Tales of Phantasia, but is largely narratively separate. The game opens in the standard-RPG-ass-medieval-ass world of Sylvarant. Or rather, it opens with the player being told a legend about how "mana" - a life-force essential to all existence, and also used for magic, both traditional spellcasting and so-called 'magitechnology' - used to exist in abundance because of A Big Tree. But there was a war and A Big Tree fucking flopped over and died. There's this goddess, Martel, that got real sad about it, and she flopped over and fell asleep, but told the angels to wake her up past one, and not hesitate to say that Martel is the top gun.

But the angels, apparently, really like to subcontract their alarm clock duties, because they've appointed a human being to do it for them: the Chosen of Mana. This Chosen has to go pray at a bunch of temples, and open the 'seals' therein, and once that's done, the goddess will wake up, and then all will be well. It's been thousands of years, and they haven't managed it yet, even though there have been many Chosens, and many attempts at waking the goddess up.

The people of Sylvarant really want the goddess to wake up, because their land has been taken over by these fuckers called 'Desians'. Not only are they (apparently) responsible for there being so little mana and therefore poor crops and shit (not that we ever see any evidence of this) but they're also just bastards who keep the people of Sylvarant in a state of terror, kidnapping people for their "human ranches" and generally just being oppressive assholes. But don't let the name fool you; the Desians are just... dudes. They're not monsters or whatever. But apparently when the goddess wakes up, they will all just disappear. Hm.

The current Chosen is a girl called Colette, who lives in a village called Iselia. It is public knowledge that she is the Chosen, and her family has a pretty high status - basically the angels have set up an elaborate breeding program, where they descend from heaven and tell people in Colette's family whom to fuck to ensure that a Chosen will be born in the next generation or whatever. Hm.

So Iselia has the family of the Chosen, and the Chosen herself. This is all public knowledge. The Desians have a human ranch RIGHT NEXT DOOR, by the way, and they have also made a "non-aggression treaty" with Iselia so that they leave each other alone. Even though Iselia contains literally the only possible threat to their rule of Sylvarant. And they know this. Hm.

Alright this is taking a while fuck I promise I'll speed up so uuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhh okay

The game actually begins one day when Colette is in school. The nearby temple rings its bell to say "now's the time to start your journey" so she goes there to start her journey. There, some Desians are, reasonably enough, there to assassinate her. But she and her two pals, Genis and Lloyd manage to fend them off, and when a particularly burly Desian gives them trouble, they're bailed out by the mercenary Kratos who sounds suspiciously like Cam Clarke and who sounds suspiciously like the guy giving the narration of the Martel legend at the beginning. Hm.

Colette receives a jewel called a Cruxis Crystal which will apparently unlock more and more angelic powers in her as she unlocks more seals. Awakening this first seal makes a giant tower called The Big Tower appear off in the distance, which is where Colette's journey will end. They go back to the village, and the party leaves Colette at home while -

Wait. She's not the main character?

Nope, it's one of those games. Like Final Fantasy 10 and, in a different way, Final Fantasy 12, our chosen one character isn't actually the hero. Nope, instead it's her best friend, a bumbling, badly dressed oaf named Lloyd, who was raised by a dwarf and has the word 'callow' tattooed on his brain stem. I'll return to this "why isn't Colette the main character" point later, but I basically agree with her not being the hero.

Lloyd does a fucky wucky and gets his village attacked by the Desians and so he gets banished along with Genis. Colette couldn't be bothered with his antics, and so left without him, and so he and Genis with nothing else to do go and catch up and see if they can help in any way. Eventually they do, and the party of five is formed: - Lloyd Irving, idiot and coffee trickster - Genis Sage, professional little shit - Raine Sage, white mage, academic, Genis' elder sister, generally spends her time pissed off at the others' bullshit - Colette Brunel, chosen one, and a complete drip, who's one of those anime "instead of having a personality I'm clumsy" sort of characters, like Asahina from Haruhi only less extra

- Kratos Aurion, resident 'nothing personnel kid' badass who is desperately trying to make Lloyd less of a moron and I'd say about 1/3 succeeds.

I'm gonna whizz through the rest of this bit. They open the seals one by one, and run into the Desians a fair few times. There is surprisingly little of consequence in this journey except:

- the party run into a lady named Sheena who is trying to assassinate Colette. After the second attempt when the party reasonably enough say "hey we're trying to save the world and you live in the world" she replies "Your world will be saved!" and then runs off. Hm.

- we run into a Desian called Kvar who is apparently responsible for the death of Lloyd's mother. When Lloyd kills him, Kratos pointedly joins in, and shows some emotion for the first time all game, and is obviously shaking with rage anytime he interacts with Kvar.

OH GOD WAIT I haven't explained exspheres have I uguguguhhhhh

Okay so an exsphere is like this little guy, right, and you slap it on the back of your hand and it makes you wicked-cool at kung-fu. But watch out kids, because if you slap it on without a special housing for it, taking it off will turn you into a Mon-Starr and you'll have to play basketball for the rest of your life. Also, exspheres gain their power from feeding on human lives. Every exsphere requires sacrificing a human life to work. The party all use them, and when they find out how they're made, they're pretty pissed. In fact, Lloyd's special exsphere ("I have a special exsphere," he says) is what killed his mum. So, RIP, I guess. The Desians' human ranches are exsphere manufacturing plants, basically.

Okay so Sheena joins the party and tells them outright that there's another world called Tethe'alla. If Colette completes the ritual and gives Sylvarant mana again, this will fuck up Tethe'alla, and she was sent by her people to kill Colette to prevent that from happening. How the fuck any of this has anything to do with waking up the goddess Martel is at this point mysterious. Hm. But Sheena sees how shit the people of Sylvarant has it and she can't go through with the assassination because she is bae and I will throw things at you, personally, the reader, if you don't agree.

Turns out the whole ritual thing, guess what, is total horseshit. The Angels aren't divine beings, they're just guys who use Cruxis Crystals (like what Colette has) to gain special powers. The Desians are just their lackeys. Basically, there's a limited supply of mana divided between Sylvarant and Tethe'alla and the Chosen ritual (which both worlds do, periodically) just swaps which world gets it and which world doesn't. Colette's goal has just been to swap this over. Cruxis (the angels' organisation) just sends the Desians to make the declining world suck ass so that people want to do the ritual. The goddess thing is halfway bullshit as well - but they really DO want Colette to wake up Colette... by flopping over and dying so that Martel can have her body.

The party don't like this one bit, but it turns out Kratos is a big, stinky traitor - he's an angel himself, and he fucks you up. Colette at this point has "lost her heart" but hasn't been filled up with Martel juice yet. The crew manage to escape with Colette, with the help of a guy called Yuan (lol) who runs an organization that resists Cruxis. It's they who tried to assassinate Colette at the beginning of the game, not the Desians, since the Desians have every reason to keep her alive. But these guys aren't too trustworthy either, so the party escape them too, and with Sheena's help go to the other world, Tethe'alla, to seek some help for Colette and - more nebulously - maybe do something about this fucked up status quo.

The party arrive in Tethe'alla, and find that it's much more affluent than Sylvarant, and a lot less medieval. There's plenty of mana to go around, and that means magitechnology. But there's also kings and shit. They eventually get joined by:

-Zelos Wilder, Tethe'alla's Chosen of Mana, who's one of those 'narcissist ladies man with hidden depths' types; sorta like Sylvain from Fire Emblem 3H only less grating

- Presea Combatir, a victim of an exsphere experiment that froze her ageing at 12 or so even though she's actually in her 20s (HMMMMM) - Regal Bryant, the president of a zaibatsu and convict who was porking Presea's sister when somehow - don't ask me how - that sister was forced into the same experiment as Presea, except it didn't work so well on her and she became a Mon-Starr, and Regal's more of a baseball man so he killed her.

I can actually skip a whole load of shit now which is great. The party figure out a way to separate the two worlds so they don't compete for each other's mana using Sheena's summoning powers, but that backfires spectacularly, so they futz around for a while curing a disease Colette has developed (and this is after she gets her heart back) until basically Kratos figures it all out for them. Turns out this system was created by some twat named Yggdrasill using this magic sword: originally Sylvarant and Tethe'alla were one world, and they were nations at war, and this war was so bad that it almost ended the world, and Yggdrasill thought splitting them up would make things better. Though his motives were genuine, he's also gone mad with power. He also reaaaaally wants to bring back this Martel lady for some reason. So the plan now is to get control of this sword, beat up Yggdrasill, and undo what Yggdrasill did.

We get some more revelations. Turns out that Yggdrasill is one and the same (yes, that's "one and the same" not "one in the same") person as a folk hero called Mithos, who 4000 years ago ended the big war. His companions were his sister, Martel; Yuan (gasp) and Kratos (GASP). They're all angels which is why they're still around.

You storm the base, Zelos fake-betrays you (or real-betrays you, more on that later), Yggdrasill flops over and dies. You then duel Kratos (because of course you do) as part of some magic ritual needed to get control of the Important Sword. Yggdrasill un-flops over and possesses whoever Lloyd's bestie is, then tries one more time to be a douchebag. You kill him, and use the Important Sword to reunite the worlds. A Big Tree comes back to life using the power of the Important Sword, and the world is saved.

Oh and Kratos is Lloyd's father, if you hadn't figured that out already.

Themes, or "Trying to say more than 'prejudice' is bad', and somewhat succeeding though not completely"

Racism and prejudice of various kinds comes up a lot in Tales of Symphonia. The one encountered most often is prejudice against half-elves. There are elves, who are apparently migrants from another planet called Derris-Kharlan (which turns out to be orbiting the world, kept in suspension by the Important Sword), and they bred with humans, making half-elves, y'dig? However, half-elves are far, far more numerously encountered than elves are, to the point where I actually think it's almost a plot hole. At first, we are led to believe that Genis and Raine are full-blooded elves, whom no-one in Sylvarant appears to have any problem with. But it turns out they're actually half-elves, and they've been lying to avoid discrimination. That's, like okay, it makes sense, but it means that there are no elves in the main party at all - and indeed the ONLY full-blooded elves you encounter (with one exception that most players will miss) are in a village in Tethe'alla where there appear to be about maybe 100 of them, and they are uniformly reclusive and distrustful of humans. Which means the player never encounters a single elf in Sylvarant at all, and elves have basically no role or place in the society of Tethe'alla either.

All this means that the way that the prejudice against half-elves is portrayed is a little odd when compared with what the game tells you. Half-elves, apparently, are very long lived, and it sort of freaks out the humans among whom they try to live when their children (and parents? I don't know how elf you have to be to be a half-elf, though we do see a couple of occasions where people are sort of given the stink-eye if its known that they have any elven ancestry, even if they're not considered 'half-elves' as such) outlive them. Elves don't treat them much better: Raine grew up in Heimdall, and she was treated like shit. Now I'm perfectly prepared to believe that, and that there doesn't have to be a specific 'reason' for an ethnic group to treat a mixed-race person like shit. But the game goes out of its way to 'explain' why humans hate half-elves so much, but never why elves do, so it seems a bit strange in the world's own logic. Also, given how many half-elves there are (more on that in a second) and how few elves there are, elves are a tiny minority, and I have to imagine that most half-elves never encounter an elf even once in their entire lives. Rather than being 'caught in between' two ethnic groups who hate each other, and so hate mixed-race people even more for not fitting into either, rather it's mostly more like half-elves are just an ethnic minority that get treated like shit by the majority (humans). [See the Tellius Fire Emblem games for a much, much better example of what ToS is going for here.]

Except there's a big problem with the whole everything going on here: half-elves rule the entire world.

With a single exception (Kratos, a human), every single member of Cruxis, including Yggdrasill himself, is a half-elf. Every member of their subsidiary bad-guy group, the Desians, are half-elves. Hell, even Yuan and the Renegades, the next-most-powerful organization in the world, are half-elves. They are in complete control of basically every single aspect of everything, though because Cruxis wants to stay secret, they take a relatively gentle hand to the day-to-day of things... except in Sylvarant, where the Desians oppress everyone.

Now, we're given to understand that Yggdrasill is largely motivated because of the horrible discrimination he experienced (interestingly we're told this was mostly from elves, since he and his sister were born in Heimdall like Raine and Genis) in his early life. So... okay, I kind of get it. Yggdrasill is oppressing humans now because humans treated him like shit back in the day (but he seems to leave the elves alone? Shouldn't he hate them more?). The cycle of violence, you know.

Except it's not as if half-elves are on top. Even in Sylvarant, though the Desians are oppressive and put humans in their ranches, in every polity in Sylvarant humans are still the ones in charge. Half-elves seem to be treated fine when they're not Desians - I think because the Desians have been made to think of as almost sort of magical monsters who'll just disappear when Martel wakes up people don't really connect them with the ordinary half-elves who live among them... even though they know the Desians are half-elves. There is some anti half-elf sentiment, and it's telling that even in Sylvarant Genis and Raine felt the need to pretend to be elves, but largely it doesn't seem too bad? Like there's this half-elf guy in a town called Asgard who almost blows up a famous ruin (with benevolent intentions, long story), and that would have been an obvious moment for the town to give him shit for being a half-elf, but no-one brings it up. So, like, I don't know - it seems okay?

Now in Tethe'alla half-elves have it REAL bad. They are at the bottom of an explicit (though under-defined) caste system (I'm presuming humans are above elves - again, gets a little wonky with how the elves feature into this society). Any half-elf guilty of any crime is executed. Half-elves are basically forced into work by the state. Every Tethe'allan character who ever talks about half-elves talks about them disparagingly or hatefully. If you're a half-elf in Tethe'alla your life sucks. Now tell me:

Why does Yggdrasill let this happen?

He is in control of the world, basically. Not only that, he is in control of the world's only major religion. In fact, we find out that things in Tethe'alla have become worse for half-elves of late, because of the Pope, who's been lobbying for the king to pass more anti-half-elf laws. Not only that, but the family of the Chosen of Mana have a huge amount of power and social influence, and the Chosen's power basically comes from Cruxis as well. So I would have thought it would be fairly doable for Yggdrasill to send an angel - any angel, he has thousands (also all half-elves) - to publicly appear before the king and say "thou shalt not persecute half-elves". Would that solve all the problems overnight? Hell no. In fact one thing ToS definitely does well is showing how deeply baked into people their various hatreds are. You get one character (Zelos, in fact) admit that rationally he accepts that Genis and Raine are good people with the same rights and so on as he does, but there's still this nasty part of him that makes him feel uncomfortable around them. But you'd think that a society over which Yggdrasill has total control, given that he's motivated by his resentment of half-elf oppression, would NEVER be allowed to do something like the "all half-elves die" law.

Now, partly, I think this is deliberate. Yggdrasill is meant to be something of a hypocrite - y'know, he's the villain, right? - and cares much more about resurrecting his sister than he does about managing the world over which he has basically absolute power. And even then, he seems to care much more about this sort of idealized version of her than the actual Martel. Notably Yuan (who was Martel's fiancée before she was killed), is adamant that Martel would be appalled by everything Yggdrasill has done, and is willing to allow her resurrection to be thwarted to stop her bro. More on Yggdrasill as a character later, but I think you get my point: the racist discrimination that's being inflicted on half-elves is being permitted - even abetted - by a more powerful group of half-elves, one of whom possesses godlike power, and has completely determined the social structure of every single living person in the entire world. Does this not feel a bit... problematic? At no point is it ever even suggested that half-elves' resentment of their poor treatment is unwarranted or inauthentic, but there's a bit of... kind of odd both-sides-ism. The humans hate half-elves - but they're being oppressed by half-elves on a much larger scale than half-elves are being oppressed by humans. Half-elves hate humans - but the most powerful half-elves are just letting it happen and not interfering even though they could. Elves hate half-elves - but elves are an absolutely tiny minority, and by the time the game is set, every time we hear an elf complain about half-elves, it's because they're complaining about Yggdrasill.

What it all adds up to is that it seems like Yggdrasill has a bit of a victim complex, that nothing he does can ever be wrong because he's the one being mistreated... so he has to let the mistreatment keep happening so that he holds onto his moral justification. But the half-elves really are being treated like shit, especially in Tethe'alla, but it's only happening because the single most powerful person on the planet is letting it happen... you see what I mean? It just feels a bit weird, d'you know what I mean?

Okay I'm gonna make this a 'part 1' because it ran on way longer than I thought it would. Next instalment I'll talk characters in more depth.

Fuck me, idk either.