Fuukan no Grasesta: Story and final impressions
Entry posted by Clephas
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Now that I've completed the main game, it is time to post about the story... which is the most important part of any VN, hybrid or not.
The story begins with Judar Schwarka, a Rovari (race of nomad/barbarians who are the source of prejudice due to their physical attributes) mercenary and his employer, Eutre Hyte, heading out to ambush the supply train of a Telphion Federation army besieging the Belgrad Empire forces in a fortress. Judar, flat and uninterested in anything except the job, is forced to listen to his loquacious employer as he expounds on the battle below, and it is in that scene that you get your first impressions of two of the game's key characters.
Naturally, given that Judar is a general badass, the prologue is mostly about him being a badass and getting the job done, but the idiot general who was protecting the fortress surrenders about the time they get the job done. This results in Judar and Eutre being sold to the Vanguard City of Grasesta as war slaves for the purpose of serving as cannon fodder against the constant incursions from the underground dungeon.
This should give you an idea of the atmosphere of the early game. Judar, being razor-edge focused on survival and the keeping of his contractual obligations, takes being sold as a slave in stride. Judar's personality is unique amongst the protagonists I've seen in Eushully's VNs. Having clawed his way up from the worst slums of an Empire aligned with the Dark Forces, Judar is extremely straightforward and blunt. He is a mercenary because it is all he knows, and, while he loves battle, he is nonetheless a survivor at heart, so he will avoid battles that don't benefit him or his employer. He is an honorable individual to a fault, and he always keeps his word in all matters, large or small. If I were to give him a D&D style alignment, it would be Lawful Neutral, albeit with the stipulation that his guide is his given word rather than the law as laid down by others. Judar could probably be considered a fighter/barbarian hybrid.
The early game is mostly about him fighting various forces in the underground and facing the oppression in the city itself, but he meets some interesting characters along the way, many of them party members. I'll go ahead and give you a quick spoiler-free rundown of the recruitable characters and their personality/roles in battle.
Eutre Hyte is a schemer by nature and a military man at heart. He gathers information and uses people who aren't his allies ruthlessly, and he is not above spying or assassination as tools to fulfill his goals. He does feel a strong sense of obligation to those in his care (Judar being one of those he considers to be such, though Judar just ignores him most of the time), but he is definitely from the Belgrad Empire, meaning his nature is more aligned with Darkness than Light. If I were to give him an alignment, it would probably be True Neutral with one foot into Evil. His role in the party is mostly as a battle-focused rogue, but he spends very little of the game in your party, so that is mostly irrelevant.
Yuunagi is a gambling-addicted hedonist from a race that is a cross between oni and kitsune. She is a freeman fighter (having willingly entered the city rather than coming as a slave). She is very light-hearted and focused on pleasures of the moment, and she doesn't even really care that her personality is self-destructive. Her alignment, quite naturally, would be Chaotic Neutral. Her class would probably be barbarian with a bit of rogue, albeit with more of a focus on evasion. I say this because all of her attacks are single-enemy, physically based, and she has the lockpick skill.
Ekthel is probably the second weirdest non-dark elf I've ever encountered in any game (the first weirdest being the child-killing schizo elf from Darkengard). I say this, but i'm not going to tell you why. On the surface, she seems kind and helpful... but appearances can be deceiving. I'd consider her to be Neutral Evil. Her class would probably be ranger, with no deity alignment.
Aguna is the battle-addicted mage-warrior who would probably scare the shit out of any man irl. She loves battle, money, and sex (in that order), and she absolutely loves life in Grasesta, despite having been enslaved (mostly because she couldn't stop picking fights and got dropped down there). She would probably be considered a hybrid class of fighter and mage, as she can wield swords, staffs, and whips, and she has both a high attack and magic attack stat. Unfortunately, she is also one of the two slowest characters in the game, with only Rosalind being slower. Her alignment would probably be Chaotic Neutral.
Rosalind is from a sub-race of dwarves known as the Nebel, who are less hairy and... round. She is cheery and light-hearted on the surface, but she has a bad habit of making weapons that explode... on purpose. Her alignment would probably be Neutral Good, and her class a combination between the engineer and fighter classes. In battle, she wields a warhammer and has some nice area attacks, but she is so slow that most characters get multiple turns before she gets hers.
Mikuri is probably the only 'pure mage' character in the game. Her personality is that of a studious sorcerer type... with the twist that she is cursed so that bad things happen to and around her whenever she goes to sleep (ranging from the silly to the seriously dangerous). I'd probably call her True Neutral. She is a pure wizard type, but until you finish her character quest, she has serious disadvantages due to her 'sleep deprived' 'skill'.
Yureeshya is an angel who has been asleep since before the worlds were fused together. As such, she is extremely naive and uneducated about the current world, and she still acts as if she were in the service of the creator god of the original human world (most angels in this setting have either 'fallen' and turned dark or are in the service of one of the many deities on the side of Light). If you manage to complete her events (which should be started as soon as you get her) she becomes one of your better healer characters, though she is only mediocre as a sacred magic user. Unfortunately, you only have a very small window in which to complete her character events, and they require you to use her healing/support spells in battle and have them fail to activate them (this failure is a roughly 25% probability). If you don't like her, you are given an opportunity to sell her to the brothel halfway through her events, but this means she isn't around to provide HP to your overall HP bar, lol. Needless to say, she is Lawful Good.
Dulphia is a Telphion noble and third in command of the Indigo Knighthood. She is very much a believer in knightly virtues, but her personality has some... problems. Primarily, she is a natural sadist and has a tendency toward tough love in her interactions with subordinates. She also joined the Knights pretty much since she didn't want to get married to some random aristocratic scumbag and because going into battle lets her get the sadistic tendencies out of her system. Her alignment would probably be Lawful Neutral, like Judar, but it should be noted that her fighting style is that of a fight-focused paladin (light element sword enchantments, power against monsters and undead). She is only permanently recruited near to the endgame, and this makes it impossible to get full use out of her... but to be honest, this game has too many light-element mages and fighters already, so I only used her against regular monsters.
Lilika is the main heroine of the story, a Grasestian noble who, due to exposure to dark miasma in the past, is forced to live most of her days with her soul attached to a flying mechanical doll whose technology is based off of the Madou Koukaku magitech concept. She is a sweet-natured but determined girl who has a lot of the positive elements of aristocratic upbringing without the negatives. She is also a skilled researcher of divine magic, magitech, and ancient languages. She wields holy magic based off of the Blue Moon Goddess Luscion, which is the most effective light magic in the game by far. She can also cast healing and support spells, making her the closest thing you'll have to a true cleric. She is Lawful Good by nature.
After playing this game, my basic impression is that, while the story segments that exist are excellent, it is too sparsely spaced out through each chapter, due to the inevitable grinding of a dungeon crawler. While I say 'inevitable grinding', it should be noted that it isn't grinding for levels... it is grinding for items to make money off of to upgrade skill levels, buy back weapons, or just in general for any of a number of purposes. I found that the only item I used regularly after the first few chapters was the container item Gladiator's Bird, which can be used to store Gladiator's Wings, which restore skill uses. One-use items are not something I found myself using on a regular basis. Instead, I tended to rely on healing magic and just not getting seriously damaged by enemies. Levels generally come to match the enemies around you or pass them slightly just by winning every symbol encounter and regular encounter on your way through each level of the Black Caverns.
Like a lot of Eushully's more recent titles, this game makes a number of major mistakes, the most annoying of which is the simple fact that gameplay has too strong of a grinding element without an accompanying 'reward' element. Rewards from grinding are generally meager, outside of first trips through a given dungeon. I only started seeing good drops in the final dungeon, where I was getting the ultimate female stat-boosting accessories on a rate of one for every other random encounter. The story itself is not layered on heavily, and it is hard to find some of the heroines' events without a guide, which is a huge problem, since that meant I never did get rid of Yureeshya's negative skill (she has a very small window to see her events that lead to this occurring, and it requires you to do something counterintuitive). Ekthel, for instance, needs you to occasionally sleep while she is not a member of the party to progress her events (because she shows other sides of herself away from you).
I'm also pretty sure I completely missed the extra events for the high-level courtesan, Atelyla, and she was a pretty intriguing character I never really got a full grasp of. I'm also pretty sure I missed out on non-H events related to Lucilla, the brothel owner in the lower city.
One thing that seriously annoyed me about this game is that it is completely linear... there is no room for altering the ending or picking someone other than Lilika. I would have appreciated a full-on Fleurety ending, just for the fun of it.
In conclusion, this was a reasonably fun game, and it is probably the best one from this particular writer. However, it has a number of glaring flaws that keep it from reaching its full potential.
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