Legaia 2 Update 2 - In Which Our Hero Molests A Sheep

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"...I'm Chesty." confesses my main character emotionlessly. I have brief, unnerving flashbacks to previous Final Fantasies. "Can we get this over with?"

He gets slapped again. If you're into abusing your main characters, you know, this is a great game so far. "With anything you do, how you begin is very important!" Galvan informs our hero. And then slaps him again.

I'd forgotten I love this game.

Now we move along. Two of the kids get assigned to stay in town. Two get assigned to go patrol Hunter's Wood, a hive of scum and wild animals. And Galvon wants to see Chesty alone when he's "Ready". Mmhmm. Time to wander around town. Let's see what I can learn about Life With Chesty.

Talking to Dein, one of the folk prepping to patrol, gives me another multiple-choice answer. To his claim that HE wishes he could be like Chesty, eating and sleeping and not doing anything else, I can either confront him, apologize, or act timid.

...Wait, what, no "Act smug because my life kicks butt" option? Aww. Since I'm shooting for the nervous, paranoid, twitchy hero type, I have Chesty go all meek on him. "I'm sorry!" he cries. "Don't be mad at me!" Dein just gets snippy, and Chesty gets a new nickname: Swordholder, which I am told is "A non-title for a swordsman who's never seen battle."

My plan to make Chesty a mincing weenie is already bearing fruit. Soon he'll be wearing a jumpsuit and wailing like Dr. Smith.

'Marcus' bitches Chesty out for being late on day one. I admit when your job is, like, three steps from your front door, this -is- rather shameful. Even I could make it to work on time if it involved opening my bedroom window and falling out. (Must look into getting paid to do this.)

A little ways away, Nancy gardens with mutant carrots roughly the size of her ENTIRE ARM. Or maybe they're ground-based pineapples. Anyway. She delivers an ultimatum: Help with the chores or get the hell over there and see what Galvan wants. More choices: Help her, Make up an excuse and get out of it, or Go see Galvan.

By now you can tell what I'm going for, can't you.

"She's in a bad mood." thinks Chesty. "I should go away somehow." He stands there blankly, thinking. Eventually Nancy speaks up again. "What?! Why are you just STANDING THERE? Go see father!" "Dumbass." she does not say, although she is probably thinking it. So instead of a clever excuse, I get proof that Chesty can't rub two brain cells together and generate one.

Am not yet impressed by cunning of world saving hero.

Boerto, whose name sounds like a Spanish meal gone horribly south, informs me that the Vigilance Corps, who I have apparently joined, has high hopes for me. Three more selections: "Being in the Corps is no big deal", "I can't let these people down!", and "I don't like being pressured." #3 it is.

"Er... please don't expect anything much..." begs Chesty. "What?! The captain's been eagerly awaiting you!" worries Boerto, whose dreams have been shattered by the whinging tone I have taken. Man, am I loving this. Hopefully I can keep this up through the whole game and have the only RPG hero who should be voiced by Woody Allen.

Having exhausted the conversational chances around Chesty's house, I wander off down the hillside and poke around town. A farm! I discover. And the chickens go buck-buck, and the pig goes oink oink ! Then I approach the sheep (which goes baa!) and Chesty begins talking to himself.

"It looks so soft!" he says. "Maybe if I got on it..."
"Hop on it?" the game asks me.

... Uhm. I tap yes, suspiciously.

Switch to a cut scene of our hero flopped over the sheep's back, arms sprawled wide and rocking vaguely back and forth atop it. "Aaaaaaah. This is like heaven!" he claims. "BAAAH!" the sheep counters. "...eek." I mumble, and quickly get him the hell off that poor sheep. Maybe molesting livestock is big in this town. The farmer doesn't seem alarmed at all. Not as much as I am, anyway.

Other highlights include the Ranma-like roof-top to roof-top jumping ability our hero has, a ladder in a barn that leads straight into the ceiling for no obvious reason, and a store where I buy a rice ball for lunch and am gifted with a Pedometer. Even here they're pushing that crappy Adult Happy Meal.

I stop by the equipment shop, where a small child is happily flailing at the wall with a broom (shades of Baby Blues) and pick up some assorted equipment. Blah blah, and since no one else in town seems to say anything potentially amusing (aside from the Town Elder, who reveals that, brace yourself, Chesty was found as a small child outside the village!) and we're finally ready to go meet Galvan.

But first, I stop off at the save point that's mysteriously appeared in Chesty's bedroom. That'll do it for me, right now.