Want to also give a quick update on the Tales of Rebirth playthrough my buddy and I have been doing.
Tales of Rebirth update: Sidequests
I know I say this every time, and @Rudie warned me about this, but the game burns through its entire story and all interesting content within the first 6 hours. You then fight a Racism Dragon and you are turned loose to wander this world for an additional 75 hours, doing little subquests to earn party-wide permanent stat buffs.
In one, we were made to go to a specific town, talk to a guy trying to get his library off the ground, and then deliver a book to a guy on the other side of the planet. We carved our way through the usual ball-breaking dungeon wander, found him at the end, gave him the book, and the guy said he needed to read the book. However, I need to return the book. This means you have to fully leave the dungeon where you found the guy, go outside, go back in, go back through the full dungeon to get back to him, get the book back, then go through the dungeon again to leave. Then fly back to that first town and give him the book back. You must then do this 15 times.
In another, we needed to find all Skies of Arcadia-like “Discoveries” across the world, because this would grant us a very-much-needed party-wide stat buff.
This one was brutal. You have to get it pixel-perfect on an unremarkable spot on the ground to trigger the discovery. Lot of us wandering around the same area, fighting battles, until we got the right pixel. Sometimes, we learned, you cannot actually find the thing unless you are sufficently high-level.
Some fun descriptions though!
When the story kicks back up on occasion, it is not able to move beyond what happened at the 6-hour mark. Everyone in this world is being affected by the Racism Dragon’s racism “Will”. Every single blessed soul in this game you speak to, will talk about how they dislike the huma (humans) or the gajuma (furries). THAT’S THE ENTIRE GAME. THAT’S WHAT EVERYONE IN THIS WORLD TALKS ABOUT, EXCLUSIVELY.
WE GET IT.
Tales of Rebirth update: Furry Rivalries
One town does not have any huma in it, and is instead all gajuma. The elder as decided to implement a TOS-style social stratification class system where feathered gajuma are at the top of the totem pole, bears are at the bottom, and the fish guys are I think in the middle.
@AutomaticTiger are featheries as a term a thing???
Thankfully, we lecture them and, while we do not solve the problem really, we give them much to think about!
Unfortunately, Vaigue is still the main character of this game, even though well and truly his entire thing is that he is worried about his smalltown sweetheart Claire. This will haunt you for the totality of the game. They never thought of another thing to do with this guy.
Tales of Rebirth update: Claire Obscura
YOU SAVE HER. SHE IS IN YOUR PARTY. But she has been body-swapped with the literal queen of the entire planet, a catgirl in a wedding dress. NOBODY SAYS ANYTHING ABOUT HOW YOU ARE WALKING AROUND WITH THE PRESIDENT OF THE PLANET. IT NEVER COMES UP.
Vaigue has a really, really, really hard time understanding that the catgirl is now Claire. He really just never grapples with this idea. It almost destroys him.
This leads to him having a magical crisis usually reserved for someone undergoing a complete mental collapse. It takes soooooooo so long to resolve this fucking story.
One highlight, though, is that you get to fight Second Best Character Tytree in a 1v1 Youske v Kuwabara battle to knock some sense into Vaigue:
As miserable as this quest was, I really love how the game brings you into fight arenas sometimes to do story progression!