We lose Vlad early on—similar to how we lost Tristan early in Lostbelt 6. I’m calling it like this: whichever Servant that accompanies the MC that isn’t Holmes or Da Vinci might as well be a red shirt from Star Trek, because they’re almost always the first to fall. Besides the point, we do get Vlad back but he’s practically worthless as a Servant for story reasons.
The protagonist—get taken prisoner by the Revenge Realm(this promises to be fun), and we’re introduced to Salome—who predictably dies while helping the protag escape. We also get some foreshadowing about another character’s appearance. This is also our introduction to Zhang Jue—who gives off the same creepy old man vibes as Columbus.
Next to Kriemhild, Zhang Jue is probably my other least favorite character of this chapter.
Meanwhile, Holmes and Kadoc go to gather information on the Reinstatement Realm—this is going to go over about as well as a fart in church.
Vanyel Konstantinos isn’t gay—j/k I actually couldn’t care less. The reason I crack that joke is the artist’s portrayal of Konstantinos looks almost exactly like Jody A. Lee’s depiction of Vanyel from The Last Herald Mage. If anyone has read The Last Herald Mage, they’ll know that Vanyel (the protagonist) is openly gay.
There’s the unrequited love story between Konstantinos and Johanna, which is the reason Konstantinos gives himself for rebelling against PHH. Slight disappointment here—I honestly expected the protag to actually have a 1:1 boss-fight with Konstantinos, and was very surprised when that didn’t happen. I’m also disappointed that we didn’t get to use him as a support, either.
Instead of the boss-fight with the protagonist, Konstantinos gets taken out by what amounts to a dues ex machina—ahem, Minamato-no-Tametomo, who we won’t see for another two years as a playable Servant.
That was wrong—Tametomo debuts as a playable Servant with the second summons campaign for the Eight Dog Chronicles event.
Anyway, one thing that did get on my nerves about this (and most other story chapters) are forced supports. I understand it’s for the purpose of the story, but come on already. What got incredibly annoying were the forced supports where you had to kill a certain number of enemies in a certain number of turns. Those proved to be a bit difficult—I couldn’t run my normal double-Castoria/Spishtar line-up like I had been doing.
Kriemhild got on my nerves—with the exception of the final fight. With the final two fights, I noticed that there was a similarity to the relationship dynamic between Brynhild and Sigurd towards the end of Lostbelt 2.
Highlights and Favs
Aside from the Paladins, what were my favorite things about this chapter? Honestly, right behind Charlemange was Don Quixote and Sancho, and surprisingly enough, Kadoc. I fully expected more sneering, smug superiority and over-compensation from Kadoc towards the protag than what we got at the beginning. It’s like as the chapter went on, there was more of an older/younger sib relationship between Kadoc and the protag than you would have expected. Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised. By the time the protag escaped from the Revenge Realm, my opinion of Kadoc had done a complete 180.
Actually, it started with Kadoc and the protag sharing a WTF moment when they first see Roland.
Sancho’s verbal bitch-slap of Moriarty was probably the next up in terms of favorite dialog from this chapter.
