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Hm, so I am. Never mind.

I think I'll leave the gaps open to debate / speculation.

Noooooo D:

Will there at least be more information on the language in future games? (And I take this as tacit confirmation that the other names are significant...?)

It's still possible to rush Tarion by abusing adrenaline pills and overwhelm him before he can strike back, though. Oneshotting him definitely isn't guaranteed, but most players will have gotten both steamthopters, and two-shotting him is quite feasible for a reasonably-leveled party. Maybe make the gap between his island and the main battlefield an impassible barrier, to force players to use the switches?

[half-dozen of]

Well, it's a brute substitution, right? So let's say you have 6 people left, and the armyQuant function returns "half-dozen". That'll be plugged in to where -STR:armyQuant- is, producing the line "Suppose they see me strolling on up with a half-dozen of strangers?" That's not grammatically correct; unlike other quantifiers, "of" isn't paired with "dozen", because English is a weird Frankenstein language that doesn't make sense.

I would advise omitting the hard-coded "of" in the dialogue and including it in the armyQuant string instead (so a "living" value of 0 would return "couple of" rather than "couple", for instance).

I think I see a problem:

Code Select Expand

Suppose they see me strolling on up with a -STR:armyQuant- of strangers?
This makes grammatical sense if "armyQuant" is "couple" or "small group", but not "dozen" or "half-dozen".

The map file for "Camp 1" shows that there's supposed to be a branch for talking to Sabrina, but I've never seen it appear. Indeed, in my Strider-only run, the game skipped straight to the next scene, even though Sabrina should have been an option.

(On the topic of the camp scene, Madeleine references Scarlet and Gavrielle in her branch, but it doesn't look like there's any handler for what happens if they died, or if Scarlet never joined in the first place. Scarlet also doesn't seem to have a default answer to Emma's question if Louise, Madeleine, and Meridian are all absent.)

Louise still gives her spiel about leaving the party even if she dies in the caravan battle. Lakshmi and Scarlet also do not join the party if they survive the battle but are not talked to.

[Silithis:]

The Vengeance of Emma Strider features a good deal of Lissit text, and to my surprise the fandom has not yet jumped on a translation effort! I love ciphers, so I figured I should try translating them using the dictionary provided in the manual. Here are my contributions.

Firstly, I noticed that Lissit race names are actually composites of regular words in the language:

• "Ge'filesh" (shadowlings) literally translates to "un-meat". A better translation might be "fleshless".
• "Thirim duuriss" (spriggats) literally translates to "alive temperature". A better translation would probably be "living heat" or "living flame", though that's only really accurate for red spriggats. Were those the first ones the lissit encountered, I wonder?
• "Hesh" (human) is also the word for hair or fur. This amuses me, since it means you would be justified in translating every instance of "hesh" as "hairy thing".
• "Silith duuriss" (golem) literally translates to "alive stone", which I would interpret as "living stone". Pretty straightforward.
• "Geduur ambuuriss" (spirit) literally translates to "shining corpse".

There are also a few terms in the campaign that are easily translated:

• "Fangiss Ka" (Silithis' unique weapon) means "Fang of the Lissit". However, the manual seems to imply that "ka" has heavier connotations than just the name of the race, perhaps analogous to "humanity" or "mankind"; with that in mind, "Fang of Lizardkind" might be more accurate, but that sounds kind of silly. Below, ArtDrake proposed "Our Fanged People", which I like.
• "Gasul" (Sarn Kamina's class) means "seer". Presumably this is how lissit refer to psychics.
• "Barudit" (the standard lissit class) means "fighter" (literally one who fights with a mace).

(Personally, I'm a bit surprised that the promotion class, Drake, is an English word and not a Lissit one.)

Names seem to carry meaning as well: "Silithis Predat" means "Patient Hunter", though the adjective comes before the noun in a reversal of typical Lissit rules. (Because of this, I've taken the liberty of localizing her name to "Patience" in my translations.) Unfortunately, if the other names have meanings I can't decipher them from the manual's limited dictionary. "Ambuur" means "golden" and "des" is the past tense marker, but I can't make sense of "Sang", "Serret", or anything else.

The lissit characters in the campaign say their last words in Lissit. Here are the translations:

• Des Serret: "Oso! Si-dama-ho...azis zesit ho. Ferat duur..." -> "No! My day...comes this day. Goodbye..."
• Hee'la: "Omisigah... Gefang fes...si-dama-blud..." -> "Omisigah... Choke on...my blood..." *
• Silithis Predat: "Si arimat sas si-dama-duurat...asit Ambuur Zaris...asit ze ka..." -> "I gladly give my life...for Ambuur Clan...for all lizardkind..."
• Siripent: "Sarn...si zet geduuriss. Ferat duur, arisat..." -> "Sarn...I am slain. Goodbye, my love..." **
• Sarn Kamina: "Ambuur Sang...si des-zet gedesariss...si des-zet esat. Si zet ko..." -> "Ambuur Sang...I was disobedient...I was wrong. I am cold..." ***

* Since "omisigah" has no exact translation and is just an expletive, I think it makes sense to keep it untranslated.
** Literally, this is "Sarn...I am dead. Goodbye, female lover...", but I think we can all agree that's a terrible translation.
*** "Ko" also means "afraid". I'm not sure which is more appropriate here.

And of course, cutscenes.

Training mission:

Silithis: "Lift your {hand}, {human}."
Emma: "I have a name."
Silithis: "Your name will be {Corpse} if you keep leading with your feet during your attack!" [...] "You see? What do I tell you, {human}? You must always lead with the {sword}, or you leave yourself open to a killing blow!"
Emma: "...my name...is Emma..."
Silithis: "Tch! You make such slow progress. You are "{human}" until you improve. Try again!" [...] "Enough hesitation. Draw your {sword} and attack me!" [...] "Sloppy. {You are weak, small human}."

Silithis visits Adelbrae:

Silithis: "Where are [the Striders] now? Tell me!"
Villager: "Ah! Wait, I...I think they left on the road north from town. I can't be sure: I was...hiding."
Des Serret: "Nuurss? Sekesh azetesh thuuriss..." -> "North? They are in danger..."
Hee'la: "Idgas! Sus zetesh tor; sus simesh baruduresh alesh ze gestat. Isa, Silithis?" -> "Whatever! We are strong; we can beat all the bandits. Yes, Patience?" *
Silithis: "Zet gekoshiss, Hee'la." -> "Be quiet, Hee'la."
Villager: "What are you...saying?"
Silithis: "How tasty you would be with some spices."

* "Gestat" is not pluralized here, but should be, unless "alesh" creates an implicit plural or something like that.

Silithis apologizes to Emma:

You have become strong, and I am proud. But in making you tough, I made you feel as if you did not belong. Thinking of this, I am gehassiss.

This one is tricky. "Gehassiss" is not in the manual's dictionary, but "hassiss" means "graced with honor" and "ge" is a negating prefix. The most literal translation is therefore "dishonored", but context implies it could also mean "sorry".

Emma: "Silithis. Did you...did you mean it when you said that you were proud?
Silithis: "Isa. Su si-ari, Emma." -> "Yes. You please me, Emma."

Silithis talks to Siripent:

Siripent: "Come no closer, {woman}; who are you?"
Silithis: "The one who will save your life, {man}; {be quiet and follow me}."

Also, I feel the need to nitpick something: In the cutscene where Silithis first reunites with Emma (on the ship), she says attacking the shadowlings is "susugeduura", and immediately translates it as "suicide". However! "Susugeduura" is the infinitive verb, "to commit suicide", so it doesn't make sense to use it for the adjectival form used to say something "is suicide"! It should be conjugated, at least.

There are also some cutscenes where the lissit talk among themselves (Silithis' orders, Battle with Gulch prelude, etc.). Presumably, they speak in Lissit and this is translated for our benefit, yet they still sprinkle their speech with Lissit words like "hesh". This seems odd to me.

Do tell me if I missed anything.

I figure we can also use this space for a general discussion of the language. After being completely overwhelmed trying to learn a foreign language in school, I appreciate how simple and formulaic it is. Only two conjugation forms are unique, and the plural ones use the same suffix as general pluralization. The general vocabulary tends to follow a very Newspeak-like pattern of having only a few base words modified by prefixes and suffixes, making it easy to guess the meaning of most words. (The ambiguity of some words can be quite frustrating though!) Overall, it seems like an easy language to learn. However, I do find it odd that a matriarchal society would follow the male-default-female-exceptional rule in their language; it makes me wonder if Ambuur Zaris is an exception, and the rest of lissit society is more patriarchal.

I also think it's interesting that "t'ayil" (tail), "ze" (the), "blud" (blood), and "kalaw" (claw) are phonetic English cognates. Coincidence, or evidence of cultural exchange?

It didn't appear to begin with. Neither did any other portraits. Every other scene is fine, it's just this one.

Well, I only managed it thanks to the Pull exploit. Without level grinding, I doubt I would have even made it past the caravan battle.

It occurs to me that it might make sense to make the final mission harder, either by buffing Tarion or changing the victory condition to "kill all enemies" (though the latter would be really evil). Boss enemies just aren't very tough in this engine.

Well yes, but my concern would be that you wouldn't get a game over for it, leading players to waste their time while thinking they still had a chance.

I...I did it. I actually did it.

Unfortunately, it was a little disappointing; though I do enjoy seeing people take on minimalist challenges that force them to find cool exploits and strategies, in RPGs that strategy is usually just "I hope you like level grinding!". You have to overlevel so much for the camp battle that everything after is trivial. I remembered the Coria Bridge battle as excruciatingly difficult, but I just ended up cheesing it by popping adrenaline pills. Rescuing Sarn Kamina got a little dicey, but I interpreted my challenge to mean I could use any vital (starred) unit, so Silithis managed to hold the line while the Striders murdered everything. I actually did lose Battle with Clotch a few times until I realized I had to rush the north tunnel if I didn't want to get overwhelmed, then it was easy. And, just like in my first game, I cheesed the final battle by flying over and oneshotting Tarion. I found that battles with lots of weak enemies were a lot harder than boss battles, but that's to be expected, considering that swordsmen specialize in dealing heavy damage to single enemies but have no method for crowd control. Their physical resistances got so high (those stats are without armor, by the way) that standard enemies couldn't do anything more than chip damage -- Sabrina actually managed to get over 100% crush resistance, and Emma got 101% slash resistance! The only thing that really posed a threat was Mind Blast, since unlike elemental attacks it can't be dodged, but you don't see enemies use that on a regular basis until the very end.

It was funny to see how it broke the story, though. There were so many scenes where Emma asked questions or gave orders to thin air. Also, I got to see everyone's last words! :D

They can use the ones that fall from the trees, too. They can't get to the one on the tiny island, but neither can you if you didn't get Meridian -- and you'll still need to find 7 other apples.

It occurs to me that Battle with Clotch could also become unwinnable if the boulders are destroyed, but I suppose you could have a party member stand in front of the tunnels...

See picture.

In the cutscene where Tarion reveals himself to Emma, he remarks that she pronounced his name correctly, which of course begs the question of what the proper pronunciation is and why it might be mispronounced. I pronounce it "tah-ree-on" but I can easily see it being pronounced differently. Any thoughts?