A gripe with the story [SPOILERS]

[The Sprinkler]

Maybe it's a localization thing, but I am fed up with these whiny people.
Three out of four instances where Lutfi is involved is just him going on a tirade and whinning about this or that. He whines about his older brother constantly like a jealous child. He whines about the Union having advanced technology, and he whines about how everything wrong with his country is because of one or the other.
And ANYTIME he is involved with battle, everything goes to crap. So much so that one of the bonus objectives is to keep at least one of his guys alive because Lutfi is so incompetent. You see one point where he can fight, but any time he takes the field he just stands there and watches his guys die and then WHINES about it.
Then, there is the (surprise surprise) reveal that the whiny mysterious woman is the Princess. The princess EVERYONE should know what she looks like, being all emo. When the hot and strongest chick finally returns, 30~ weeks later, she yells at this whiny, mopey girl to get her ♥♥♥♥ together so we can figure out who started the riots, and the princess is all "uhnnn why should i what's the point everything is meaningless, also I might be the female version of Shinji" and ends up getting the Rawiyah killed. Why would anyone stay at that battlefield to have a very important conversation anyways? Bro the 'Hanged Men' know you're there get the flip out of there! Grab the Princess and yank her dumb face somewhere safe!

[Meowish]

Originally posted by TigerNightmare:

Unless the text is different in other languages, it's definitely not the cat. It doesn't speak within the characterization of the cat, that sort of playful, annoyed, condescending tone with an occasional catism like a meow or a cat pun or some other such reference to being a cat. The text, or voice, within Spiral of Destinies speaks more like an emotionless, impartial mediator or observer. A narrator, a host. Perhaps a tutorial-chan or the game itself personified. If the cat was speaking, they would show the cat like they would in every other instance.

Good point, since it's always been the cat explaining stuffs about mechanism in the game, i figured it should be the cat too. And it's been saying "i'll be by your side" even outside of SoD. But the wording part isn't cat-ish like you said. Just a simply "Welcome Back. This is the home you can always return and i'll always be by your side."
https://ibb.co/r68gVMH
But there's a higher chance that it's the UI coder miss rather than translation miss. Since it's that way in all versions. Plus the game lets you choose your menu navigator other than the protagonist's sprite, i put the cat in mine so it might be why it show up in the say good bye scene, so it's not necessity to be the Cat for everyone else?

[Arion]

My Momo goes up from her base 3234 matk up to 3945 thanks to only 2 leader auras. So while she has one leader buff on her, her stats are actually increased by all of them. Maybe this is unintentional? But that's what it is.

[Meowish]

Originally posted by Arion:

My Momo goes up from her base 3234 matk up to 3945 thanks to only 2 leader auras. So while she has one leader buff on her, her stats are actually increased by all of them. Maybe this is unintentional? But that's what it is.

You can check the buffs by clicking on their portrait during battle. If it stacks it will be shown there as stacked.

[Arion]

Yeah, but look at the stats. 3234 + 10% does not equal 3945. Oddly enough doing +10% (*1.1) twice also doesn't result in 3945, but 3913.

[Meowish]

Originally posted by Arion:

Yeah, but look at the stats. 3234 + 10% does not equal 3945. Oddly enough doing +10% (*1.1) twice also doesn't result in 3945, but 3913.

There are gears and weapons that buff up states after a battle starts. There's also some special stage rules that does that. So i am not sure where you get that extra from. But i can be sure it's not from stacked faction buff, since it doesn't stack in the buff list means there's no way a mistake can happen in the code when the UI is functioning correctly. If you put 2 leader that can effect a character, you will see 3 buffs on that character, 1 under the name Leader Aura which is +10% atk and +20% def, the other will be named after the leader's skill which gives those extra buffs. For the case of stacked buffs, you will see it reflected in the buff list as stacked.. eg. Having a buff that stacks +2Mov, and having 2 of it will show both in the list not one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vm4aZ8V207w

By the way, when i say "Overlap" it means it took over the better version (whichever that gives more). But as we can mostly see that almost all of the Leader buffs do +10% atk and +20% def... with an exception... Miguel's Drifters Leader buff gives more, with +15% atk and +30% def... so if you have a Drifter character with multiple faction, and put Miguel in the battle, the Drifters on the field will not show the normal Leader aura in their list but rather show up a World Drifter Aura that replaced the Leader Aura.

Command Aura (The one with fixed range) will stack with the leader aura. Tactic Flag Aura (by summoning the flag) will stack with them as well... so you can actually have 3 types of aura stacking. But Auras of the same type only overlap each other, whichever is the better version took over.

---

If i must recommend... there's 3.. maybe 4? Leaders that you guys could take note of.

[1] Lilywill (Basic Leader with +1 Mov for all Vlder faction), needless to say here, +1 Mov is super useful for tacticians.

[2] Col (Basic Leader with +15% crit and +15% crit damage for the Assassin faction, the blue shuriken mark faction), well +15% crit and crit damage is... superb on assassins and archers... Lilywill, Iggy, and a lot of Vlder benefits from this one as well, so you can actually run Col with a Vlder setup. Faycal and Rawiyah benefits from it too, so Col can be placed in the SoC group as well. Just that Col will not benefit from the other Leader aura, but her own is being too useful anyway. Stack-able with Lightning's Command Aura of +20% Crit. So you can easily build an OP high mobile/range crit team with this setup.

[3] Gloria (Basic Leader with +12% damage and -24% damage taken when being retaliated, for the Union faction), well... it's almost a cheat for the union group... lol.
Gloria also carries a Command Aura that -10% enemies atk around her.
She also carries a command "flag?" aura with her that +12% atk and def on allies near her.
So she alone gives Union units near her a total of 24% more atk and +12% damage on top of that... a super buff machine.

[4] Miguel (Drifter Leader aura +15% atk, +30% def), though Miguel's version doesn't gives any extra buffs, but since i am not sure about any other Drifter leader so i'll just list him here. This is the stronger version over the Basic Leader buff and will replace the others if put together. (Edit: It seemed that Only Miguel version of the Drifter Leader buff give more, the other Drifter Leaders give the normal 10% type as seen on Abyss)

[Arion]

Hmm yep, I forgot I had the engraving effect when unharmed +12%, that's what it was. Still useful to take more faction leaders to apply more effects, like Col's +15% crit for alacrity.

[Meowish]

Originally posted by Arion:

Hmm yep, I forgot I had the engraving effect when unharmed +12%, that's what it was. Still useful to take more faction leaders to apply more effects, like Col's +15% crit for alacrity.

Yeah, Col + Lilywill + Lightning and we can easily have 5-digit damage from far away... lol!

[GrimSentinel]

Originally posted by Meowish:

The merchant route is to change the perspective of luxite and its value, turning it into luxury item rather than war fuel. Our aim is to raise the price so high that, it's not beneficial to be used as war tool and "selling" them makes more profit than war.

Since I cycled through this part of SoD today, I took some screenshots:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3348535521
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3348535727
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3348535876
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3348536113
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3348536226

Everything you're claiming is blatantly false. Selling Luxite was about appeasing the Union. Getting the Papal States to sell their Luxite was also about appeasing the Union. When the Papal States sells, it's at a lower price. Nothing about making Luxite into a "luxury item" is mentioned.

[Meowish]

Originally posted by GrimSentinel:

Since I cycled through this part of SoD today, I took some screenshots:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3348535521
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3348535727
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3348535876
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3348536113
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3348536226

Everything you're claiming is blatantly false. Selling Luxite was about appeasing the Union. Getting the Papal States to sell their Luxite was also about appeasing the Union. When the Papal States sells, it's at a lower price. Nothing about making Luxite into a "luxury item" is mentioned.

Read more?

[TigerNightmare]

Originally posted by GrimSentinel:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3348535521
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3348535727
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3348535876
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3348536113
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3348536226

These links aren't working, but I do agree, there's nothing in the game about making luxite more expensive, it's about getting the Papal States wanting to sell their luxite because everyone else was. Hoarding it became pointless if other factions were gaining power from all the profit.

[Meowish]

Originally posted by TigerNightmare:

These links aren't working, but I do agree, there's nothing in the game about making luxite more expensive, it's about getting the Papal States wanting to sell their luxite because everyone else was. Hoarding it became pointless if other factions were gaining power from all the profit.

The thing about Luxite is Papal use it for the blessing rituals and holy symbols of their religion, the symbol of their holy power. Up till now, the only Luxite mines are in the control of Papal. Until one is found inside Iria, and that changes the monopoly of Luxite on the Papal's side and the secret to their holy power threatened, so they are not too happy about it. Union on the other hand wanted to use it as war tools and have invented other mass killing weapons with it as well as use it to upgrade their weapons, and they needed an excuse to get hold of the mine in Iria. Even the Drifters and miners found uses of it as explosives where they use it to power up bombs and cannons. The Miniya (Miniyan?) invented the luxite guns, the one Lufti uses. Iria on the other hand use it for tactical advantages and experiments (similar to Papal's blessings), where it ended up as those "cheat skills" the commander is using. And there are those mined in the North as well, where Iria uses these in their experiments (Beryl too). And not to forget, the DarkLight uses luxite to create monsters. So Luxites already have a lot of uses outside of War. The perspective change is just making the value other than war more appealing and in the end, luxite itself become a valuable item outside its normal usages, the reason Papal finally sell theirs.

Oh, kinda of related too. Beryl is branded the "witch" due to her experiments in luxite may uncover the secrets of Papal's holy blessing. And she's being dishonored/stigma by the Papal agents as a "warning", and to isolate Beryl from the others. Which is the reason why she ended up in Iria.

The aim in the merchant route is to gain favor of each faction for the good ending. Giving Samantha the evidence is the way to buy the favor of Papal, Succeeding the Luxite trade is the key to gaining the favor of both Iria and Union. Setting up the Fox and Squirrel Union is the part where you gained Mine City and Vlder's favor. The part he showed is only the beginning of the whole chain effect. The part where it stopped the war from happening where we fulfilled the impossible order quantity from Auguste. He also missed the part where Dantalion sent the protagonist the mail about the trade, the conversation with Akambe before and after the trade and a lot more. He's just eager to jump on conclusion without actually reading everything.

[GrimSentinel]

Originally posted by TigerNightmare:

These links aren't working,

How about now?

[TigerNightmare]

Originally posted by GrimSentinel:

How about now?

Strange, now they even appear in my quoted text.