A Mage Reborn, Book Two (WIP) - UPDATED August 7th | Book One Released!

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1603

First time playing since the new update and wow, that’s all I can say. This game keeps getting better and better.

Anyway, i’m a bit torn, though, because as much as I loved Satiel, I’m also really liking our new phantasma, Raegusa. In a way, they are opposites. Just like our MC can be, who before dying could be altruistic and generally good, but after coming back can be full of rage and less merciful.Satiel’s visage as he appears to us before dying is angel like, whereas Raegusa’s powers are more dark and he himself looks demonic. Also, who do you guys think is more powerful between them?

Oh, and on the topic of Raegusa, Is he our proper phantasma seeing as we can we can use his powers seemingly without any issues? Whereas the others nearly killed us?

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1604

I guess not, the mc is not of the correct bloodline.

Nope, not without issues, it stresses the mc’s feeble mana ducts just as much as the rest of them and requires Eli to constantly “heal” the mc. Where the process of said healing is presented as so painful it may as well be torture.

And that “healing” seems to require Eli’s arcana and is extremely painful. :unamused:

Really the only way it’ll ever truly get better is if, at minimum the mc gets to dump the three completely useless parasites, as that would lessen the stress on those mana-ducts.
Otherwise all Eli does is fight stupid symptoms in an incredibly painful manner, not the underlying cause. And the Arcadians do not seem interested in helping to deal with the underlying cause, nor does Eli himself. Thus leaving mc to suffer incredibly painful self-inflicted torture every time they use Arcana and then require incredibly painful “healing” afterwards to prepare them to use Arcana and torture themselves in the process again.

It is a cycle of pain and torture that looks like it will never stop the longer the mc remains in Arcadia. Very reminiscent of his miserable youth but with Eli and Thalia taking the place of Thaubal.

1605

Correct me if I’m wrong, but my thinking when I was reading about Eli healing the MC, it was referring to the damage done to the MC’s mana ducts during the war, and not due to Raegusa’s powers.

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1606

The war left MC’s mana ducts so damaged they can’t spell strong Arcadian spells, mostly low normal ones. Doing so requires extensive healing every time they stress the ducts. Raegusa’s magic is truly ancient and powerful, no wonder it fries the ducts with a single spell.

Edit: Hey so, incredibly dumb question this late in the game, but can someone describe the parasites? Everyone mentions 4 or 5 but besides our Phantasma and Raegusa the others seem to completely fly over my head whenever I replay.

I think they are referring to that scene (don’t remember if after saving Eli or after Aulain) where they are healing you along Thalia.

Ahhh the marks in the arms right?

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1607

Why do I feel like I’m witnessing a giant political debate going on here lol? My MC is essentially a depressed mage that feels like since he died once already everything is meaningless but his love of Eli is what’s keeping him trucking along. My boy don’t care about no wars or genocides, he barely cares about the state of his health, he just wants Eli lmfao

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1608

Honestly, it’s not that much different from a political debate, and when it comes down to it, politics is basically whoever has the most influence, and that does also include military matters depending on the situation so you could argue this is one as well

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1609

Join the depressed corner. We have hot choco.

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1610

The MC has 4 phantasma to start with (one for each type of magic), and then he picks up Raegusa, so that’s 5 already. F has the snake thing, Yu has the fortress-levelling tornado (Zephyros?). The twins have the mana overflow dude. Sister also had one, which I’m told is what enables her to throw the portal at your face during the final showdown with her (I was convinced it was the claws). Eli has one focused on healing.

If it’s the section at the tomb, what she’s healing is the fact that your guts are hanging out of your belly, which is the wrong side of a belly for guts to be.

IF (IF) I understand things correctly, not exactly - the marks are seals that imprint the phantasmas into you. The four phantasma are the ones you can pick from when going up against sister for the first time: the shaman Gwael for enchantment, for example, and from what setanta says, I think Satiel’s the dude for thaum (I always trash thaum, so I dunno), then there’s the lady with the scythe for Spirit aaaand… someone else for alchemy.
Like, imagine you nail a poster to your wall - the phantasma are the poster, the marks are the nail.
I think.

Raegusa’s case is… special. He’s DEFINITELY not your proper phantasma, because he’s NOBODY’s proper phantasma. The proper bloodline for Raegusa ended when the Paramis killed Ghislain way back when. He’s easier to use than the rest because you still got him “properly”, so to speak - your acquisition of Raegusa was basically Raegusa, Ghislain, and Augur finding a loophole in the rules. By contrast, the other four got forced into you in a way that was never supposed to happen.

It’s the difference between getting away thanks to a technicality and getting away because you killed all the cops, so who’s gonna stop you anyway?

EDIT: Understand that I say this from the little I could gather from the (very sparse) information the game gives us about how phantasma work. As far as I can tell, phantasma are inhabitants from another world who can bind to people in our world and give them access to power boosts, and using those power boosts screws up your mana ducts because human mana ducts were never meant to take the stress. Sort of like putting a nitro boost in a car. It does nothing until you press the button, at which point you get bombastic speed at the cost of a screwed-up engine.

It’s possible that the more Arcadian your blood is (and/or the less powerful the phantasma? Flyss brings out the snake a billion times in two fights, but the snake is also not particularly impressive in comparison to some of the others) the less stress your mana ducts go through, so you can use a phantasma more often, or a more powerful phantasma, or more phantasmas? Maybe Arcadian blood is like having a better engine in my little nitro analogy.

It’d be interesting to know if other phantasma also refer to their bearers as “beloved of Isha”.

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1611

:coffee: this shit high key good af, I might stay in this corner for a bit lmao…

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1612

My purely speculative theory is that Isha herself is (also) a phantasma and would have been the mc’s “proper” phantasma (in addition to the being worshipped as a diety thing). Which could be one reason why Thaubal may have overlooked her as a possibility, thinking she’s the Arcadian diety and not (also) a phantasma. Or maybe the ritual to bind or make a pact with her was lost long ago even to the old Arcadians, what with the “let’s not teach our youth (all) of our secrets” stupidity.

In any case my mc is definitely not taking on any more of the parasites if he can help it. Which thus far has not been the case, unfortunately, as Augur simply forced the mc in the end too.

I still think this is the mc’s main problem, nobody else seems to have more than one and even for Yu who seems to have a much more powerful phantasma than F I don’t get the impression that either bringing it out or recovering from it is particularly painful or unpleasant for him. It does last a lot less long than the snake so strength of the phantasma may indeed increase strain, so it probably doesn’t help that all of the mc’s five parasites are not exactly the weakest of their kind.

Still the original four, at least in what we can do with them in the game, seem on par power-wise with Yu’s fortress levelling wind arcana yet the mc pays a seemingly much, much more severe price for it than Yu does.

And while using their phantasma may bring some level of discomfort to Eli and sister in the past it doesn’t seem to be the agonising torture with the extremely long recovery times (at least without Eli torturing them with his healing arcana) it is for the mc. Based on Eli using his arcana (as Thalia specifically said they couldn’t do that without Eli’s arcana) for the mc’s extremely painful mana duct “healing” sessions without needing to recover for months or weeks themselves afterwards.

And thanks to the earthworm the mc now has to lug around five of the things, with three of them being nothing but utterly useless parasites. :unamused:

That’s putting it mildly. In any case thanks to Arcadia and Eli the mc can look forward to a lot more Arcana-induced pain and torture…yay. :disappointed:

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1613

I think it’s a combination of stuff. First, you have phantasma forced upon hosts without the proper ritual, then you have multiple phantasma in the same host, then you have MC straining their ducts with mana beyond a human’s resistance disrupting the natural flow of mana (making the process arduous and painful) and according to what I remember there’s a compatibility issue under comments such as ‘‘being chosen by their phantasma (Eli’s case for example)’’ or Raegusa’s power feeling ‘‘slightly out of synch’’ when using them, like the talk about bloodline from earlier.

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1614

That’s just what my mc would try to do. Just pick an option and proceed with extreme prejudice.

This is the important part.

1615

How is Eli serving as a jailor?? This feels like taking his actions in the worst possible way, he seems to be the only character who currently has the MC as their main priority because they care about them outside of political gain. (Within Arcadia)

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1616

After the escape attempt it is literally said that he does and he offers Thalia to make the mc “fall in line”.

In an extremely paternalistic manner, maybe, but at the end of the day Eli answers to somebody else, like Yu. They only do what they think is best for the mc, even if it directly contradicts the mc’s wishes.

So at the moment that makes them, like Yu, sympathetic but not actually helpful to the mc and at the moment that means he’s not really on the mc’s side either.

But we can’t trust Eli at all either, at the moment. They may well have ratted the mc out to Thalia to begin with.

Anyway the mana-duct “healing” sessions with Eli and Thalia are presented as so incredibly painful in the game itself that it is hard to see an actual jailer topping that. Also mc must have a really high pain tolerance by now considering their life thus far.
Really the only thing Eli has is a nicer bedside manner than a generic jailer would have had and a paternalistic and condescending “sympathy”. for the mc’s plight.

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1617

Better Eli then somebody else doing it that you can’t trust at all

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1618

One of my favorites WIPs. I can’t wait for this

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1619

Hi, first time playing this and I’m already in love.

I’ve come across a weird detail in the third chapter though.

Summary

Still, the fact remains that the cave’s destruction has erased any and all evidence that may lead you to the curse’s originator. Barza has sworn revenge regardless, insisting that he will tear through the cave’s rubble and claw the artifact’s pieces out himself—sounding so resolute that you dare not contradict him.

Is the “cave” not destroyed only in one of the 4 routes? The one where you actively choose to destroy it? Why am I seeing this text when the cave was very much intact?

Am I missing something or was this a typo?

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1620

Ok, I just finished the demo for the first time and I have a few thoughts in a disorganised order I’m pouring while being very sleep deprived:

First off, stellar writing, despite what you’ve said about English being your third language I’ve seen a SINGLE typo/grammar mistake outside of the newest update, and even in the newest update, they’re very far between.

It might just be me not appreciating romance in a lot of other CoG/hosted titles or just personal preference but GOD, some of the romance scenes here were extremely touching, especially Ilya’s jailbreak if you with “I’m just tired of living the fugitive life” if you try to stop her.

2 scenes in particular are annoying in different ways, with the scene where you save those children from the bandit encampment being the first one:

The way it either forces you to lose time(2 more skill increase picks at the town right after it is a big deal stats wise ngl) and lock you out of saving half the children OR go in and save all children except one BUT take a 25% hit to one of your secondary stats no matter how high your relevant magic stat is, which is…too punishing, contradictory to a scene which goes for the same thing by allowing you to try to save everyone again(the scene where you decide to cure everyone during the plague, in which you (almost) succeed with no penalties if your stat is high enough) and inconsistent to how stats are regarded by the setting itself.

By the time of the scene, you can get a single magic stat to 80(or slightly above 80, I can’t remember exactly) which is a number that stays at the “you will get a success at every stat check, guaranteed” level for the entire rest of the book, including the fight with our sister. This really begs the question: How the hell was our skill(s) enough to get us through an entire war and beat someone who is definitely one of the strongest mages in the entire world, but not enough to take care of, what, a few dozen bandits??

Second scene is the very end of our fight with our sister, and her being allowed to put the curse to keep silent on us ONLY because we stood there and talked to them instead of just killing them when they were at our mercy. I get why a high heroism character that talked to them at the start of the fight MIGHT do this, but a high pragmatism character who instantly attacks? Really?

And also a few thoughts on Arcadia in particular, because they are by far the most complex faction in the setting so far, and the one that the setting clearly intends to focus on the most.

Was the genocide(s) bad and unforgivable? Obviously. Does the kingdoms that perpetrated it deserve to pay and does the Arcadian people deserve their land back? Obviously. But in my opinion, the near-complete slaughter of the Arcadian NOBILITY was both an ultimately good and also inevitable thing. We are talking about petty mage god-kings who keep getting stronger with each generation, have magic advanced beyond the wildest dreams of anyone else, and have no systems or anything in place to keep them in check.

What was going to happen when Arcadia inevitably at one point becomes agressive due to some diplomatic incident or shift in Arcadian foreign policy or simply because the petty god-kings of Arcadia, in their ‘clear’ superiority to the lowly Ercei decide to expand their enlightened rule over the continent, or any other million reasons Arcadia would eventually become agressive and expansionist because of how much more advanced and stronger they (apparently) were?

Of course you could say that this by itself clearly does not justify the destruction of Arcadia even if the war to do that was as restrained as possible, to simply dismantle their political power, and you would arguably be correct. Afterall, we do not see Arcadian racism against others pre fall of Arcadia, and what few glimpses of pre fall Arcadia we see seems to indicate that their rule was leagues better than that of the other ruling classes of the world.

But that brings me to my following point which is, what the hell the Arcadian people were going to do against their petty god-kings when this world’s analogue of the french revolution happened, or anything similar? How could they have ever hoped to challenge a ruling class whose members can seemingly kill hundreds of people each, and when they come together they can level entire cities? When they can just revive eachother and then throw those revived very very strong mages back at them? This is why I think the near complete destruction of the Arcadian NOBILITY was, if not inevitable(which I strongly think it was) was definitely well deserved and needed.

This also ties into my last point, which is that Tahlia and her ilk, with POSSIBLE exceptions of Eli and Yusuha/Yurui are NOT to be trusted and supported under any circumstances IF it is impossible to either usurp control of the organisation or handing it to someone who is not clearly racist against all non-arcadians and does not wish to cement Arcadia’s status as above every other nation.

Is Arcadian independence worth fighting for? Absolutely. Under an organisation which, if victorious, will clearly commit the same crimes that were committed against their people for no reason other than revenge? One that clearly wishes to cement Arcadia as the imperialist hegemon instead of the Empire? No thanks.

Either way, this demo is on my top 3 most anticipated games, great work.

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1621

Soo in each of my playthrough I always choose to ran away from arcadia, and I choose to vow vengeance on Thalia, is that gonna happen anytime soon in the future or that’s just us releasing our pent up hatred/anger, cause I really want to kill her, alongside Falco and Ante

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1622

The fight with Sister has you draw on your phantasma, which brings a whole lot more “oomph” than regular magic. Because that has you use Arcadian magic, which is just objectively better than non-Arcadian magic.

I await your evidence for the pettiness.

Nothing, because we have no evidence that they were petty or mistreated the population. I note that you’re not asking what Paramites are going to do against the Param nobility, who can just slaughter a bunch of them on the basis of “because” and be punished by checks notes having a slightly lower noble title, keep the most productive lands (with the rest being annexed by the crown to consolidate its power), and still being left in charge of the relatives of the people they slaughtered. The answer to this is DEFINITELY “nothing”, because peasantry going against an army and political police inevitably results in a lot of dead peasantry.

People who don’t want an entire race to hate them don’t genocide and enslave that race for generations.

Whenever Arcadia was not above every other nation, the result was always, ALWAYS, without exception, “Arcadians get slaughtered and enslaved.” Therefore, the only way in which Arcadians don’t get slaughtered and enslaved is to make sure Arcadia is above every other nation, and Arcadians would very much like to not be slaughtered and enslaved, thanks.

Then it’s a good thing Thalia’s very stated goal isn’t this but actually “end the Parami royal line, aka the people who slaughtered and enslaved Arcadians at every turn.” There’s not even a hint that Thalia wants to go imperalistic, other than getting the Arcadian lands back, and she’s certainly not doing it for revenge: she’s doing it because whenever non-Arcadians had ascendancy over Arcadians, the Arcadians got slaughtered and enslaved.

I wish I knew why F keeps getting so much flak for not immediately being nice to someone who was the bodyguard of the royal line who, if I understand things correctly, had them enslaved for three-quarters of their life.

I mean, we agree on SOMETHING, at least. :laughing:

Don’t be an Ilya, man. Saving a bunch of kid’s lives is worth the stat hit, especially seeing as you can pick the stat (and never use it). I never used Intrigue in the entirety of my playthrough, so meh on the bum knee.

I haven’t found missing out on those 2 skill increases to be a big deal, tbh - I still passed every check I ever wanted to make. I hit the end of Book One with magic skills at 60/90/30/77 and my social skills at 61/77/25, which should be enough to let you do whatever you want. I never failed a single check.

Note that this is, effectively a stat trade: you’re trading whatever for Prestige increases.

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