Topics

In the first mission (two bandits vs. Striders), Sabrina got both bandits down to critical health (so they would die from one more hit). Red backstabbed her, and died to the counterattack, after which the game gave me a permanent hourglass symbol. I could still move the cursor and summon the terrain tooltip with Alt, but the enemy turn wouldn't continue.

I have Windows 7, version 1.041, and the latest version of Adobe AIR.

Attached are my two most recent log files (the second of which I forced with L).

Rather self-explanatory. Some portraits that are large or have protruding bits (like shadowlings' horns) can overlap with the message box and cover up text. Tarion is a particular offender here with his very long side horns. Would it be possible to shift these portraits to the side, or something?

Snide Devile's introductory monologue will occur for every one of the three stair tiles, regardless of if you've already seen it or not.

I kept expecting Igor and Fera to be directly confronted at some point, but after the escape sequence they just kinda vanish from the plot. The epilogue also says that Fera disobeyed Igor's orders to leave Emma alone, but I don't remember that happening. Is there supposed to be something more with them, or are they purposefully kept as loose ends?

In the battle with Tarion, Rebecca was killed by one of the southeast archers, and dropped her items. I had Doran pick them up, but afterwards, other enemies would start dropping her items too. One of them was one of the generic slavemaster shadowlings, another was Tarion -- in addition to his focus pills, the item bagged appeared on the edge of his island, in the southeast corner. I forgot to make a log, unfortunately.

The fact that autosaves overwrite the current save file is a little vexing, and makes it difficult to really plan and organize save files. I was especially miffed to find that completing a campaign destroys the save file. Would it be possible to make a separate autosave slot?

At the end of the battle with Malcolm, Malcolm's portrait and name are used for the message box despite Harriet clearly being the speaker.

I think there's a memory leak somewhere. Battles run fine to begin with, but lag more and more as time goes on. It seems to be localized to individual battles though; when I start a new battle, the speed is back to normal.

Is he not supposed to join the party afterwards? I talked to him and he joined the fight, but he wasn't present in the cutscene afterwards and didn't stay on the roster.

Fliers can fall in water if they're made heavy while over a bridge... I think. I lost the battle before the next turn so I don't know if they start drowning, but they definitely displayed the "splash" effect.

I'm sorry if this has been brought up before; the changelogs mentioned an inventory bug so maybe it has.

Anyway, I'm using Windows 7, and my inventory is extremely unreliable. Items will just disappear between battles, particularly ones I buy. I've lost the blood orb you can buy in the shop twice, as well as Temolo's lockpicks, one of the gold psy orbs, Ebon Raban's dropped equipment, and a number of replacement weapons. I think they might actually be changing into throwing axes? Most of my reserve inventory consists of throwing axes, but I don't remember buying or finding nearly so many. This seems to mostly affect reserve items. If I place items in my characters' inventories, they're usually okay... although I know I equipped Ebon Raban's kite shield so maybe not.

Items will also unequip themselves between missions sometimes, mainly Emma's and Sabrina's armor and helmets for some reason. In addition, sometimes they seem to be equipped but don't display the "E" symbol, and at least once I noticed that equipping an armor de-equipped a helmet (or at least removed the "E" symbol).

I'm sorry I can't give a log or more details, as I only even noticed something was off midway through the game, and I still usually don't notice until a few missions down the line. I'll try making before/after logs at the next shop I reach.

I know the title may seem strange. Hear me out.

I'm not saying that the Gift is literally a metaphor for homosexuality, and in fact I think "homosexuality" can be substituted for lots of other things that central religious organizations disapprove of. But it's one of the more controversial issues in today's society, and it's what led me to this conclusion.

The other day, I was talking with a friend of mine, who is a decent fellow, but very entrenched in his religious beliefs. We got into a debate about gay rights, and midway through the conversation, a chill ran down my spine as I realized we were acting out the final conversation between Duvalier and Cygnus, almost word-for-word. We used the same arguments: I told him that there was scientific evidence that homosexuality is an innate thing, not a choice, and he countered that it's not a sin to be homosexual, just to act on those desires (eerily similar to Cygnus saying that whether or not people are born with the Gift, they choose to use it, and that is a sin).

I remember a blog post a while back where Craig was lamenting that so few video game critics earnestly analyzed his game for the writing and "central metaphors". I wonder if this is one of those? I think it is an interesting area of inquiry regardless. What do you think?

(I know this is rather...belated. I apologize. Consider this more of a suggestion for future games. Perhaps it can be moved to the TT wish list when/if such a forum is made.)

To me, I find it odd that assassins get a number of powerful attacks with special backstab bonuses, but shadowlings get nothing but shadow blast. Perhaps psy assassins could get a similar attack? Perhaps not matching it in power, but it would be nice to have something assassin-like for a class that is supposedly an assassin.

Alternatively, maybe give shadowblast backstab bonuses.

In TSoG, the trainer asks you a question about your temperament before deciding which elemental affinity to focus on. This implies that they are based around personality. But what I found particularly strange is that, believe it or not, they kind of match up to the four core class courses taught in the US elementary system. Sounds crazy, I know, but bear with me for a moment. The four "core classes" are science, history, math, and English (really more like philosophy and rhetoric). If you took four students that each made one of those four courses their passion, I think their answers to the question would be as follows:

Scientists believe that wisdom lies in bringing new possibilities to light. By definition, that's their job: experimenting with the natural world to find new possibilities and advance our understanding of the universe. Historians are the opposite, believing that wisdom lies in scrutinizing the mistakes of history to avoid repeating them. Mathematicians believe in distance and rationality, breaking the observable world down into math and easily-analyzed formulas. On the flipside, rhetoricians believe in great passion. They believe in philosophy, the power of human nature, and the power of language -- emotions and passions.

Admittedly a test size of 1 is useless, but I personally fit the pattern -- my preferred course is science, and I picked light. I do see the others as legitimate possibilities, however, and for a while I was tempted to pick cold, because I also believe in rationality over emotions.

Well, anyway, this was just my crazy observation. Feel free to comment or mock as you wish. These are merely my crazy ramblings, you don't have to take them seriously if you don't want to. :p

You can recruit soldiers from a number of different factions. I was just wondering, do the types of soldiers impact anything? For example, would the 500 psy academy soldiers be worth more than Ravinale volunteers in the final battle, or just as much? Festus seems to imply as much when he offers you troops, though of course you never get them, so that theory can't be tested...

I know that this is kind of late to be suggesting things, for obvious reasons, but what I'm suggesting is minor, so hopefully it is feasible to include in a patch.

Griffin, Rahel, and Arman all learn upgraded versions of their attacks that have much higher damage multipliers, but greater costs -- Double Strike, Trueshaft, and Mega Stab respectively. However, Rajav, who is mostly a simple melee unit, does not get anything like this however. Would it be possible to give him some form of equivalent? He really isn't good for much else, and since he and Griffin are so similar, it seems a bit imbalanced to only give one of them a major damage attack.

I created an article for the series as a whole a while back -- now that TSoG is out, I decided it deserved its own separate page.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TelepathRPGServantsOfGod

Hopefully this will get the game some publicity. If you're a troper, feel free to help out!

These are two of my favorite techniques, though there is something I find a bit confusing about them:

The descriptions of Fury and Stimulate say that they work by increasing the amount of certain neurotransmitter chemicals in the brain (this technically makes them very similar to a number of narcotic drugs, but that's neither here nor there). While this makes sense in most cases, how in the world do they work on Luca and Rajav, who don't have physical brains? And what about Malis, a shadowling? Surely her brain chemistry -- if shadowlings even have brains -- is wildly different than those of fleshy creatures.

(This could also tie in to the question of how Rajav is able to train his strength when he has no physical muscles to exercise, come to think of it.)

I'm really lost. D:

Is there supposed to be any pattern to what you're doing? Is there a specific place I'm supposed to be heading? I've been going northwest for a while now, and I think I hit the edge when I got the black orb at 28N, but other than that I have no idea where I'm supposed to be going. I assumed north just on principle, but that led me to a dead end, so...? I'm currently trying to go all the way west, I'm not sure how successful that will be.

Is the cache of books closer to the center, and I'm wasting time by looking at the fringes?

The four temperaments are "personality types", like horoscopes or star signs, only actually accurate. Horoscopes are inaccurate because they rely on external variables, such as "if you were born on this day when the stars were in this alignment, your personality is this!", which is silly. Temperaments are more like "if your personality is this, then you can be described by this category". They are not labels or things that circumscribe you, simply handy descriptions. Instead of having to say "introverted, pessimistic, emotional, moved by beauty, cares for order" and so on, you can just say "Melancholic".

A very, very useful and extensive article about them can be found here. Tell me what you think -- what temperaments do you think you are? What temperaments do you think the characters from TRPG are? Do you think the temperaments are complete hogwash? Please tell me what you think.