~ Valkyrie profile (PSX US.ver): vs Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth PSP vs iOS & Andriod. ~
Valkyrie profile PSX:
Nearly identical to the Japan version but with minor fixes in the menu screen. In the Japanese version, Characters not in the party were unable to change or learn skills nor were they able change or remove equipment. The US version allowed out of party members to change and learn skills as well as change or remove equipment without being added to the party. Also in the Japanese version, Lenneth would unequip all her skills and equipment when switching between sword and bow. The US version 'remembers' the previous setting when switching weaponry and is automatically equipped with the skills and equip. Another improvement over the Japanese version is an improved item sorting option.
There are a few instances of censoring such as Badrach's smoking.
Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth PSP:
Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth lacks the improvement made in US version. Rather than re-rendering the textures of the dungeon maps, TOSE cropped and upscaled the pre-rendered images to fit the portable console's screen, resulting in severe blurring in some areas. This version also removes the anime opening movie in favor of 3D CGI, animated movie. Certain key story-sequences were animated in the same style as the opening movie and can be viewed at anytime in the Gallery option in the title screen once unlocked in the story. The animated scenes include:
Other big changes are:
- Opening Movie
- Lenneth's Awakening
- Jelanda's Transformation
- Alicia witnesses Barbarossa's execution
- Lenneth's encounter with the Lord of the Undead
- Lenneth and the Homunculi
- A chance encounter between "Meril" and Lucian
- Lenneth in Weeping Lily Meadow
- Lucian's departure to Valhalla
- Hrist's Awakening
- The Sovereign's Rite
- A Ending
- An enhanced version of the original game's localization
- Square Enix cleaned up the original game's English script and additional voice over dialogue for the CG movies was recorded by New Generation Pictures, rather than the original company, TAJ Productions.
Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth iOS & Andriod:
This is the PSP version being ported to iOS & Andriod, with the following changes:
- Enhanced graphics such as character portraits. >* Enhanced Text.
- Enhanced UI.
- The option to skip cut-scenes.
- In-app purchases to unlock collectibles
- Ability to turn on auto-battle.
~ Chrono Trigger (SNES): PSX vs NDS vs iOS & Andriod vs PC. ~
Chrono Trigger PSX:
Anime cut scenes created by original character designer Akira Toriyama's Bird Studio and animated by Toei Animation.
A new Extra Mode Option was added that is divided into different categories of viewable extras, that are unlocked as you finish the game, and just as shown in the picture, they are:
- Theater.
- Art Gallery.
- Music Box.
- Tech Showcase.
- Monster Data.
- Boss Data.
- Endings.
- Treasure Map.
Chrono Trigger NDS:
This version includes everything new in the PSX version, and also has big and a long list of changes and additions, which I will try to condense them as much as possible:
- Ability to play using the two screens and the touch screen, or in classic mode through a single screen.
- Added the Arena of Ages: A monster arena where You pick basic monsters and raise them to fight computer and wireless opponents.
- Added the Lost Sanctum: A sidequest during the main game. It consists of two dungeons in two different eras.
- Added the Dimensional Vortex: A extra Dungeon, available after beating the game once and appears in three different eras. Each dungeon is different.
- A lot of New Items.
- New Enemies in the new dungeons, in the form of palette swaps of old enemies.
- One New Ending after finishing the Dimensional Vortex completely.
- New Translation that changes a lot of names form the original version to something more faithful to the Japanese version.
Chrono Trigger iOS & Android:
Both versions initially were based on the NDS version, but later on got an update to make them similar to the PC version.
Chrono Trigger PC:
Everything on the NDS version is present here except there is No Arena of Ages. What they did add however is:
- Auto-Save feature.
- Higher Resolution Graphics and update UI.
- Support for mouse and keyboard controls.
- Remastered sound and music.
~ Star Ocean: The Second Story (PSX): vs Star Ocean: Second Evolution (PSP) vs PS4 (JP.ver). ~
Star Ocean: Second Evolution:
- A New Translation that changes almost everything in the game.
- New voice actors. >* New voiced acted scenes; All major story events now have voice acting.
- New recruitable character: Welch Vineyard.
- New Private Actions and 13 new Endings.
- Unlocking the Galaxy and Universe modes now require defeating a specific number of enemies in a single playthrough rather than unlocking voices in the Voice Collection. >>>* Practically all Combat Skills have been refined, some being removed (such as Cancel, which is now automatically implemented).
- The combat system has been slightly refined, now allowing all melee fighters to perform a 3-hit combo as their normal attack.
- The Super Specialty "Bunny Call" no longer allows the player to "climb" on towns and some terrains. The player now will enter a town upon approaching while in Bunny Form, and can even activate private actions.
- All items in the inventory screen are now depicted as 2D icons instead of the original 3D models.
- Many bugs and glitches have been fixed (most notably the infamous random Cave of Trials screen freeze).
- Ring of Lightspeed (called Slayer Ring in Second Story) now works on Dias Flac.
- New character designs and portraits.
- No magic combo mechanic.
- Crafting animations are now replaced by a still 2D image.
Star Ocean: Second Evolution PS4 JP.ver:
This enhanced version was released only in Japan on the PS4, with enhanced graphics and BGM, and a DLC that helps you with the gameplay.
~ The Last Remnant (Xbox360): vs PC vs PS4 & Switch Remastered. ~
The Last Remnant PC:
This version is only available to purchase in the EU SquareEnix online store as of right now:
Battles:
Items:
- Turbo Mode is now available, and can be toggled on or off while giving orders to unions in battle. When on, battles play out at double the speed.
- Crimson Flare, a new Arcana, is now available.
- New formations, such as Eremurus Rain, are now available.
- Enemies hit considerably harder.
- Rare Monsters can have significantly higher HP than their XBOX 360 counterparts.
- Arcana require substantially more AP.
- Unique Arts now require AP.
- Remnant Arts can only be performed by union leader, Weapon Arts now require high union morale.
- Offensive Weapon Arts now increase morale when used.
- Additionally, Arcana and offensive Special Arts now raise morale by a fixed amount.
- Likewise, certain Enemy Arts now lower morale by a fixed amount.
- Wards now affect the entire union.
- Attributes required for formation upgrades are vastly different.
- Healing no longer raises morale, and morale increased by Critical Hits has been dramatically reduced.
- Union morale now fluctuates based on more conditions (IE: taking an action, successfully landing a hit, receiving damage, etc.). In the X360 version, union morale stayed somewhat static, usually changing when being healed, being KO'd/terminated, executing a successful Critical Trigger. It also did not drop to 0 whenever an offensive Special Art was executed, whereas it will do so on the PC.
- Linking additional enemies together does not increase your Battle Rank further than having fought them separately.
- Special commands, such as the use of David's Gae Bolg, are no longer interrupted by being raidlocked by a different union or having targeted enemy union defeated by an ally.
- Allies now have the option to cure a friendly union's Curse status ailment via "Cure them even if it kills them!" command. This command is in the XBOX 360 version as well, but is only available when the union is Enthralled; it will not be available when the union is cursed.
Units:
- Items are color-coded in the PC version, and a new preview feature lets you see what the item looks like in battle.
- You can now toggle between viewing the stats of a weapon or shield and viewing a preview of what it looks like in battle.
- Components and consumables are now categorized.
- Items are now color-coded based on their rarity.
- Creation or customization of some items require fewer components.
- New items available via Blueprint 4.
- Various weapon stats have changed.
- Some very rare monster-specific drops can now be split from monsters (e.g., Godwood Timber, Spiritwood Timber).
Sidequests:
- The leader limit is no longer imposed. Unions can be composed entirely of leader units if the player desires.
- Likewise, soldiers can now be set as union leaders.
- The stat cap has been lifted for all characters to allow a maximum of 255 for each stat.
- The Seven are now recruitable after completing Union of the Golden Chalice Task #70: For Our Lord.
- Rush can now be removed from the active party.
- Khrynia can learn the new Unique Art Dual Snowpetal.
- Arts can be disabled, filtering which skills a unit may use in combat.
- Leaders' requested components are displayed when viewing their stats.
- Leaders' wield style can be changed depending on their equipped weapon.
- Shields now prevent style changes mid-battle.
- The following classes now prevent style changes: Guardian, Scout, Hunter, Wanderer, Thief, Alchemist, all Mystic classes, Vagrant, Mercenary, Aristocrat, Djin, Fortuneteller, Sage and General.
- The experience required to advance Wield Style skills has been reduced, and the experience required to advance Weapon Type skills has been increased.
- Three new classes are now available: Ataraxian, Cleric, and Ninja.
- The Guardian, Fencer, and Warrior classes now require non-sovani wield styles, and are thus not available to Sovani.
- The Gladiator class now requires Power Grip and Wards.
- Hybrid classes (Item+Combat and Mystic+Combat) can now be achieved by units who do not start in one.
- Some leaders now have a different weapon upgrade path, which caused some units to learn new Weapon Arts while others lost theirs.
- Leaders can request weapons that do not coincide with their weapon upgrade path as long as they match their equipped weapon type and size.
- Soldiers can now request weapon drops.
- Some units have had their starting Unit BR level, stats, class, equipment, arts, and hiring wage changed.
New Game Plus and Hard Mode: After the epilogue and credits, you can now save your game. When you're taken back to the main menu, you can load this save to begin a new playthrough that carries over certain elements from your previous playthrough. You will also be given the option to start the new game in Hard Mode.
- The completion of At Hatred's End is no longer required in order to activate Things Unchangeable.
- Duke of Ghor now has a … icon when you speak with him between the first, third, and fifth base battles.
- The component requirements in The Assistant have lowered.
- The DLC content is now unlocked differently; the majority of the extra content now requires the completion of certain guild tasks.
- The Leader Extraordinaire guild tasks which required three units of a single class now only require one.
- The Monsterslayer guild tasks require different enemies to be defeated.
Miscellaneous:
- The PC version will warn you if you cannot leave an area without a fight.
- Auto Save is now available, which automatically saves after having changed zones or having won a battle.
- Battle Rank is now viewable outside of combat, in the party menu.
- Battle Rank progression has been slowed considerably; it takes more encounters/enemy unions terminated to increase in rank.
- Characters with … icons are now identified with markers on the map.
- Enemies can no longer be respawned by saving and reloading an adjacent area.
- New saving opportunities are now available, such as before the base's boss.
- A warning message is now displayed if you attempt to save your game in an area which you cannot leave until you defeat a boss.
- Mr Diggs's digging animations are now much quicker.
- The loading screens that explained some of the game's mechanics have been disabled.
- Many areas of the game have had their spawn tables altered or repopulated.
- Starting battle music now coincides with starting morale in most battles.
- "Turn the Tide" and "Beat the Odds" now play during the second half instead of after entering Elysion.
- Union highlighting during the selection phase has been toned down (ie: ally unions don't look quite as blue).
- Leaders in reserve no longer gain skills via the Rush only skill grind trick.
- Soldiers now slowly improve their stats in reserves.
- Camera in battle doesn't swing around as wildly anymore.
- Mitra soldiers' idle stances now come in 2 varieties: the one shared by both male and female units and the one exclusive to larger male units, rather than just the "large male mitra" stance.
The Last Remnant Remastered PS4 & Switch:
Based on the PC version, also added:
Yes I am salty about this if you can't tell, since they removed the PC version from steam.
- Graphics now are in Unreal Engine 4
- A new function to run faster on the overworld.
- Extra save slots.
~ Tales of Vesperia (Xbox360): vs PS3 vs Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition vs PS4/PC/Switch/Xbox One. ~
Tales of Vesperia PS3:
- Features full voice acting, nearly twice as much voice work as the original.
- New Characters, including 2 new playable characters: Flynn (permanantly playable now), and Patty Fleur.
- New subplots, skits, and main game quests, and sidequests.
- New mini-games
- New songs
- Remodeled towns and new towns and dungeons.
- New bosses.
- The ability to replay boss fights.
- New 8 Mystic Arts.
- New artes, skills, and equipment.
- New item: the "Artes Ball", which allows an additional eight artes shortcuts to be assigned to the previous eight slots combined with the L1 button, which allows for a maximum of 16 artes
- New character costumes
Tales of Vesperia: Definitive editionvs PS4/PC/Switch/Xbox One:
Based on the PS3 version, it has everything from it and all the DLC included for free, with higher resolution graphics depending on the system.
~ Tales of Symphonia (GC): vs PS2 (JP.ver only) vs PS3/PC. ~
Tales of Symphonia PS2 JP.ver only:
- New animated sequences.
- New Mystic Arts.
- New Unison Arts.
- New Arts for playable characters and enemies.
- New Techniques.
- The frame rate was lowered from 60 frames per second to 30 frames per second.
- New customs.
- The "Synopsis" option in the menu displays newer entries at the top
- The Casino in the game is now actually fully playable with it's own mini-games, and chips to collecet and exchange for items.
- The skits are graphically more dynamic. Portraits get larger or smaller quickly, swing from side to side, shake, and so on.
- New Titles
- More post-battle animations.
- Niflheim dungeon extended and 6 new boss characters, fought in 2 new boss battles.
- Bug Fixes
- New events to help raise affection.
- Includes new side quests, new camera angles on some cutscenes, new animated cutscenes not featured in the GameCube version
Tales of Symphonia PS3/PC:
- More customs.
- Improved character textures and improved some environments.
- Dual-audio support: Japanese and English voiceovers, which neither the PS2 or GameCube versions had
- Cutscenes support voice acting in both languages, but skits only have voice acting in Japanese. If you select English, you will just see the subtitles during skits. This is not a porting issue, as this is just how the GameCube version was.
- While the original GameCube version ran at 60fps, the Japanese PS2 port which the PS3 Chronicles HD version is based off of ran at 30fps. The Steam version can run at 40FPS.
- HD graphics
~ Skies of Arcadia (DC): vs Skies of Arcadia: Legends GC. ~
Skies of Arcadia: Legends GC:
- New Ranks for the Swashbuckler Rating system.
- Random encounters occur less frequently and load considerably faster than the Dreamcast version, and EXP offered per battle is adjusted to compensate.
- Graphically, the game sports mild improvements to character models, most noticeably adding individual fingers to the designs. The modifier volume shadows and (weirdly enough) point-mipmapping from the original release are still present.
- One of the new sidequests available is Bounty Hunting. Sailor's Guilds offer information about each person on the bounty list as they are unlocked through story progression. After reading about them, they can be found in a constant location.
- There are a number of new discoveries to be found.
- Two linked sidequests
- "Pinta Quest" minigame was removed
- DLC comes with the game.
~ Persona 3 (PS2): vs Persona 3 FES PS2 (English.ver) vs P3P PSP. ~
FES PS2 (English.ver):
- A whole additional epilogue has been added, The Answer. This chapter is only available in one difficulty setting, which is supposed to be on par with Persona 3's Hard mode.
- New Personas have been added
- Secret videos of the protagonist's dorm mates have been added to flesh them out.
- Koromaru can now be taken on walks.
- Several of the Social Links have been modified slightly, such as Tanaka being available at a different time
- Several new Quests have been added.
- New costumes can be worn in battle.
- A new event involving Chidori Yoshino was added.
- Naganaki Shrine was completely overhauled.
- A hard mode was added.
- Save data from Persona 3 can be transferred into the game,
P3P PSP:
- The Answer is not included in this verion.
- Added a Female Main Character, so now you can choose between the Male and Female MCs.
- The game lacks 3D environments and character models (outside of Tartarus), all anime cutscenes are gone, the graphics and audio quality were compressed,
- The storyline of the female protagonist features many differences from that of the male protagonist, such as new social interactions as well as Social Links.
- New voiced dialogue.
- Players have the choice of selecting Elizabeth or a male-equivalent named Theodore to be Igor's assistant in the Velvet Room.
- The ability to pick who the protagonist spends the last moments of the game with. This feature is only accessible on a New Cycle
- The Desert of Doors from the Abyss of Time seen in The Answer will still appear, however, in an extra feature known as the Vision Quest. In this mode, the party can fight stronger incarnations of the Full Moon shadow bosses — save for Arcana Magician — and partake in special battles that test the party's abilities. When all of the battles have been successfully met, a second optional boss can be fought: Margaret, Igor's assistant in Persona 4 and guardian of the Desert of Doors in P3P.
- There are now two overworld save points; Aside from the log book in the Iwatodai Dormitory, there is also one on the main character's desk at school.
- In Paulownia Mall, the police station is now the only place where the protagonist can buy equipment and sell items. Aohige Pharmacy is now a buy-only store, and Be Blue V is just a part-time work site and hangout to improve the main character's condition
- From previous versions, two difficulty modes have been added: Beginner and Maniac alongside Easy and Normal in Persona 3 and Hard in Persona 3 FES:
- A new tactic, "Direct," has been added to the game, allowing control of the party members, unlike Persona 3 and Persona 3 FES.
- The "Wait" command is replaced with the "Defense" command, and will decrease the damage and any knockdown effects of the next attack the user suffers.
- The game grants "1 More" to a combatant who attacks multiple enemies not knocking all of them down; the original Persona 3 required all hit enemies to be knocked down for a 1 more.
- Party members who have been knocked down no longer spend the turn by getting up and can act as soon as they stand.
- Upon landing a critical hit or striking an enemy's weakness, party members can follow up with a co-op attack.
- Fusion Spells from the original Persona 3 are now activated from items instead of equipping a persona and selecting it like other spells.
- Allies can now take a fatal blow to the protagonist for them if they are able.
- "Dizzy" has been added as a status effect.
- Returning to the main lobby in Tartarus no longer automatically restores the party, and must now be done for a fee via the save point (this cost varies based on the date in-game and status effects currently inflicted on the party)
- Floors can be directly returned to from the entrance of Tartarus instead of being restricted to the restore point like previous versions.
- "Tired" status no longer is inflicted during Tartarus exploration, and is inflicted to all used party members after leaving (this will only drop to "Good" if the character used was at "Great" during exploration).
- Unlike previous versions, money found by party members when split up will now be given to the protagonist.
- Party members' equipment and status can now be accessed at any time from the pause menu, unlike in previous versions, which required the protagonist to speak to them while exploring Tartarus in order to change their equipment or view their status.
- You can now control Party members directly.
- The protagonists only have access to one weapon type (instead of having access to all weapon types like in P3 and FES); the male protagonist wields one-handed swords, and the female protagonist wields naginatas. As a result, the Skills "Fist Master," "Bow Master," "1hdSwdMaster" and similar skills have all been combined into a single skill called "Weapons Master." Its skill card is called "Phys Boost," and all Personas which had learned a "master" ability (like Cybele with Bow Master) now learn "Weapons Master."
- Personas now have the ability to produce a Skill Card when raised to a specific level. Each card can be used on any Persona to teach them a skill.
- The Inari Sushi in Naganaki Shrine no longer grants random bonuses for item gaining and Tartarus explorations. Instead, it offers to duplicate Skill Cards, which will take 5 days to complete
~ Persona 4 (PS2): vs Persona 4 Golden Vita vs Persona 4 Golden PC. ~
Persona 4 Golden Vita:
- Two new Social Links.
- A New Dungeon.
- A New bad ending.
- New Difficulty levels have been added: Safety/Easy/Normal/Hard/Risky.
- Several new music tracks.
- Additional voice-over dialogue.
- Chie and Teddie have new voice actors in the English version.
- New animated cutscenes.
- More Personas, including new Ultimate Personas for the Investigation Team.
- New areas can be visited.
- New events.
- The protagonist can now explore Inaba in the evening when Dojima is not home.
- The protagonist and his friends now have motorized scooters to explore various areas.
- Costumes are now available to buy at Croco Fur, in Okina City.
- New Garden and Bug Catching features.
- The ability to choose which skills can be inherited by the Persona the protagonist is fusing.
- New scene skipping function
- If the necessary criteria for at least the good ending are fulfilled, daily activities are expanded to February 14, 2012, giving more time for events and social links.
- New epilogue has been added for the True Ending.
- The list of Requests and the Fox' emas have been modified.
- Rise can now assist the Investigation Team in All-Out-Attacks.
- Added Tag Team attacks: two members can team up to perform a united attack.
- Added Cavalry Attacks: Attacks from members of the Investigation Team that are not currently in the party.
- Spell buffs and debuffs can now be used on the same character to prolong the effect
- A new gallery menu has been added: "TV Listings." It displays bonus content unlocked through the main game at any time.
- Floors and chests in dungeons can now reset by changing floors instead of leaving the dungeon and TV world, or visiting another dungeon.
Persona 4 Golden PC:
- Bug fixes
- The game will run at up to 4K resolution with 60FPS+ as opposed to the Vita's 476p resolution and 30FPS target
- Includes dual audio language and multiple text language. The anime cutscenes now also include subtitles
- In the Steam version, the player may customize their difficulty setting at any time, in contrast to the Vita version only letting you do so on New Game Plus.The player may select a preset difficulty setting, or individually alter the following parameters
- The player may select a preset difficulty setting, or individually alter the following parameters.
~ .hack//G.U (PS2): vs .hack//G.U. Last Recode PS4/PC. ~
.hack//G.U. Last Recode PS4/PC:
- A brand new episode titled Vol.4//Reconnection, which takes place a year and three months after the events of Redemption
- HD graphical update for the whole game.
- Ability to restart the battle from the beginning if Haseo dies.
- Movement speed on foot has somewhat increased.
- The item stack size has increased from 50 to 99. The maximum number of item stacks in the inventory has increased from 30 to 90
- Item menu shortcuts and sort features
- When using an item in the field, pressing the X button repeatedly will cause the item to be used again without navigating the menu a second time.
- The maximum number of Chim Spheres and Virus Cores the player can possess has increased from 99 to 999
- Platforms now include the Platform Recovery feature, recovering a large portion of the party's HP and SP. It can only be used once per visit to a field.
- Saku and Bo no longer switch the active player based on their level being even or odd. They can instead be selected as separate options in the Party screen.
- Decreased the probability of allies selling the items the player give them.
- Voice clips for returning characters and NPCs between games have been updated to use the Volume 3 clips from the beginning, except where said clips are unavailable.
- Attack power has been increased and hit stops during attacks have been reduced to speed up the battle tempo.
- Learning weapons proficiency increased and acquired experience points increased.
- Awakening scenes can be skipped using the Option/Start button.
- Some of the really tough enemies have been made a bit easier
- Skeith’s general shot bullet speed has increased during Avatar Battles.
- Enhanced battle balance and game pacing to provide an optimal experience.
- Avatar battles now show a stun gauge over the enemy's head. Red diamonds have been added around attacks meant to be deflected using scythe slashes that are in range.
- Added suspend feature during Avatar battle gameplay.
- In Volume 3, the player is given 22 "Promise" greeting cards, meaning it is possible to do the "Forever in Love" / "Best Wishes" events with all party members in a single playthrough.
- A new Cheat Mode allowing players who want to just enjoy the story to start the game with a large amount of items, best equipment, maximum money and chim spheres, and maximum level and affection for the respective volume.
- Save files from Cheat Mode plays can be converted to the next volumes.
- The videos from “The End of the World” Terminal Disc included with the limited edition PS2 release of Volume 1 are included in the collection
- A New Job Form for Haseo with a new weapon.
- A New Form for Skeith.
- Ovan joins the party.
~ Final Fantasy 12 (PS2): vs FF 12: International Zodiac Job System PS2 (JP.ver only) vs FF12 Zodiac Age PS4/PC/Switch/Xbox One. ~
Final Fantasy 12: International Zodiac Job System PS2 (JP.ver only):
- Addition of a "Zodiac Job System" featuring twelve jobs with individual License Boards corresponding to twelve zodiac signs
- Addition of a 16:9 widescreen mode with menus and HUD at 4:3.
- Addition of three new game modes: Trial Mode/New Game+ Strong Mode/New Game+ Weak Mode.
- Pressing L1 will speed up gameplay. Conversations and events continue to play at normal speed.
- Quickening doesn't consume MP. Now they use their own Mist gauge similarly to Limit Breaks from previous Final Fantasy titles.
- UI Changes.
- Playable characters' starting LP, consumables, gil, gambits, equipment, licenses, and base stats have been modified.
- You have more control over Guests now, they also gain EXP/Item/Gold.
- Many magick spells and technicks have been tweaked, renamed and recategorized.
- Obtaining Quickenings no longer affects max MP and Mist charges do not diminish when MP is consumed (unless the player is affected by a reversed Elixir or Megalixir). The player's MP is also unaffected by the depletion of Mist charges. However, effects that recover the player's MP will also restore Mist charges. One Mist charge is granted each time the amount recovered totals the player's maximum MP. Effects that fully restore a player's MP recover all Mist charges.
- You can now fully control Espers, they also require MP to cast magicks
- Almost all attacks now break the 9999 damage limit from the original by default.
- New items have been added, such as Cura Mote, Bubble Mote, Domaine Calvados, Baltoro Seed, Dark Energy and various Meteorites.
- Bacchus's Wine now has 100% chance of inflicting Berserk (previously it was 50%).
- Several equipment pieces were added, while some available in the original release were removed or tweaked.
- New Weapons added.
- Most shops had their assortments changed. Many weapons are now available from shops earlier because of the job system, and were thus made weaker.
- Treasures respawn by moving just one area away as opposed to two. Treasures were moved around, changed the items they can give, or were removed altogether. The "forbidden chest" concept was removed, that in the original prevented the player from obtaining the Zodiac Spear in Necrohol of Nabudis if they opened a wrong treasure.
- Dark Matter can no longer be acquired from the bazaar, and selling the ingredients needed to make it in the original will result in making the Dark Energy instead. The Dark Energy is an item that does not charge up with Knot of Rust or Devour Soul and always deals 50,000 damage to each enemy in range.
- Treasure chests are now in different locations and contain different items.
- There are more traps throughout the map.
Final Fantasy 12: Zodiac Age PS4/PC/Switch/Xbox One:
- Remastered HD graphical upgrade.
- English and Japanese voices (switch between them in the game configuration).
- Original and newly re-recorded background music (switch between them in the game configuration).
- Auto-save functionality added (game saves automatically when moving to each new screen, excepting boss arenas)
- Improved high-speed mode and improved play time operability during high-speed mode
- Ability to invert both the X and Y camera axes
- The game balance has been overhauled to make it easier.
- Each playable character can have two jobs at once.
- Job Reset function added; talk to Montblanc in the Clan Hall to use.
- The Effect Capacity system that limited spell-casting in the PlayStation 2 versions has been removed.
- Fire, Thunder, Blizzard, and Cure only affect a single target again.
- Espers' HP values have been doubled, but other stats kept the same as in Zodiac Job System.
- The animation for summoning Espers is removed.
- A glitch concerning Dyce's character model has been fixed.
- New Game Plus and New Game Minus are now accessible from the beginning of the game.
~ Rune Factory 4 (3DS): vs Rune Factory 4 Special Switch. ~
Rune Factory 4 Special Switch:
- HD Graphics.
- Newlywed Mode.
- Hell Difficulty.
- Additional Movies.
- Another Episode DLC.
- Swimsuit Day DLC.
- Many Town Events are now prioritized if requirements have been met. This includes Memories, which unlocks the last story arc and the events required for marriage.
- The map has been moved to the main screen and can be removed and resized with the press of a button (the Switch has only one screen) or by using the touch screen icon.
- The teleport spell has been mapped to a dedicated button. It can still be used from the touch screen.
- You can now change the voice acting language between English and Japanese.
- Many bug fixes.
Players and antagonist compete for the same item (be the first to the pirate treasure.) Players are trying to prevent antagonist from getting an item (Prevent a villain from getting a powerful dark artifact.) Get the pirate treasure, the lost crystal of Atlantis, your stolen belongings. Obtain a treasure map, secret codes, powerful spell, find Villain's only weakness.
Win the race around the world. Win a mock-war between adventuring parties. Win a Quidditch game.
Evil Vizier wants to replace the king and players need to prevent that. Evil King is in charge and players need to overthrow him. The King has died and both sides want to be the next King.
Heroes: Kill the villain, a vampire/werewolf/basilisk, all the baddies in the area. Stop a serial killer. Villain: Kill the heroes, kill people to drink their blood or to satisfy violent urges.
Heroes: Kill a monster. Villain: Kill an innocent creature.
Destroy a doomsday device, the ring of power, a piece of blackmail.
An enemy base, a castle, a ship, close a portal.
Save the person being targeted for an assassination. Save the family being harassed by criminals.
Save the endangered creature from the hunter.
Someone is planning to steal the priceless diamonds during the party, stop them.
Heroes: Capture an enemy general to gain strategic information. Antagonist: Abduct a person for ransom or sacrificial ritual.
Heroes: Rescue hostages, save the kidnapped princess. Recover a soldier behind enemy lines during a war. Break someone out of jail, or liberate a prisoner en route to prison.
Rob a train/zeppelin/caravan with the treasure. Intercept a valuable message passed to the enemy.
Overtake a city, a castle, ship. Plan for an attack on the evil citadel. Compete for control of the territory. You have conquered a kingdom, defeat the remaining groups running guerrilla warfare against you.
Prepare the city to repel the enemies/monsters. Your town/building/ship has been captured and overtaken by enemies, survive under siege, and liberate it.
Deliver a prisoner to jail. Escort a bratty princess to the boarding school. Escort a caravan with the treasure.
Transport valuable treasure. Deliver a valuable intel to the central command before the enemy strikes. Deliver the ring of power to Mount Doom.
Capture the criminal/runaway. Bounty-hunters. Find a missing person. Find out what happened to the lost expedition. Find the only wizard who knows how to lift a curse.
Capture a zombie to prove they exist. Capture a unique creature for research.
Escape the pursuit of the law. Help a wrongly convicted to escape. Escape an ambush. Hide a person from danger. A massive assassins guild is trying to kill you, stay alive until dawn. Break out of prison.
Broker peace between warring nations, families, factions of nobles, King and Queen, fighting giants.
Start a war, pit people/factions against each other.
Solve a murder or a theft. Uncover a mysterious plot and understand who is behind it. Supernatural mystery. Understand what is causing the strange/weird events. Understand what happened in the abandoned/deserted city. Find out someone's dark secret, expose a corrupt official, find evidence to convict someone.
Find a spy/mole, prevent a convert mission from taking place.
A covert crime, a ninja mission, a terrorist act. Enter and leave a heavily-guarded building without getting noticed.
A business competitor, a nation.
Go undercover in the criminal gang. Blend in with the nobles to poison the King.
Enforce the law, collect debts, force a person to do something they don't want.
Prove your or someone else's innocence. Convince the angry mob that the woman they're planning to execute is not a witch.
Complete a ritual/experiment, build a weapon, open portal, resurrect/summon/awaken something.
Prevent a ritual from taking place, prevent weapon from being built, prevent a terrorist act.
Compete for the lady's heart, compete to convince the King to take a different course of action. Bribe/manipulate/intimidate a corrupt official into doing what you want. Try to close a business deal or prevent it from being closed. Play cupid. Make two quarreling people fall in love with each other. Find a lonely person/creature a girlfriend.
Brainwash and manipulate groups of people into doing your bidding, liberate brainwashed people. Free the town from the mind control spell. Convince enemy soldiers to defect to your side. Free a person from the influence of a sinister cult.
Run a kingdom, village, sports team, team of agents, organization, business. Raise morale, lower the crime, stop witch hunts, deal with corruption.
Think of the place itself as the “villain”, it is a monster without HP that "wants" to hurt players or drain their resources, and has certain powers to accomplish that. Traps, cave-ins, lava eruptions, rock-slides, avalanche, collapsing buildings, impenetrable mist, wild animals, dangerous/poisonous flora, falling into a pit, getting lost, etc. Climb a mountain, get through a swamp, quick sand,thin ice, wild magic area. Open an ancient gate. Retrieve an item from the bottom of the lake.
Get stranded in the desert, an island, an alien land, becalmed or in a storm. Help other people survive a natural disaster (storm, earthquake, flood, meteor), a war zone.
Potion ingredients for a witch, parts of an engine that were scattered during crash landing.
Lead an army against enemy general, against rival mob boss or a cowboy gang.
Rats in the basement, wolves in the forest, Zombies, Aliens. Could be impossible to kill them one by one, and must be done with a ritual, destroying the mothership, smashing the necromancer's amulet, lifting an ancient curse, placating the restless spirits, activating the ancient defense mechanisms.
Players try to get away with a crime instead of investigating it.
Smuggle/Plant an item instead of stealing it. Close the portal instead of opening it. Banish the creature instead of summoning it.
Destroy an item instead of killing a person. Abduct a person instead of stealing the treasure. Protect a secret instead of the location. Chase a lost pet instead of the criminal.
Don't get murdered - prevent a murder. Steal an item - create a distraction while someone else steals it. Get away with the crime - help someone else to get away with the crime.
Make it stealthy (commit a heist instead of robbery). Avoid violence (capture a person alive instead of killing them). Achieve the goal by social means (ruin the person's reputation instead of killing them). Do it before the rivals do it first. See the list of complications for more ideas.
Deliver an item while on the run from the law. Sabotage a ritual to rescue a person. Infiltrate a group to steal an item. Solve a mystery to be able to find a lost person.
Get through the dangerous location instead of an elaborate security system. Obtain information about the villain's weakness instead of the only weapon that can kill them. Convince a witness to talk instead of following the trail of footsteps. The object is difficult to deliver because it's being hunted by bandits, or because the terrain is dangerous and inhospitable, or because it's large and fragile, or because it's a criminal trying to escape, or because it's cattle you need to keep alive, or because it's a bratty princess who doesn't want to go to school. See the List of Challenges and List of Villain's Moves for more ideas.
Steal the Elixir of Youth from the unicorn instead of stealing the Aztec gold from the Spanish Galleon. Steal an item from a dream instead of casino. Escort a dragon instead of a prisoner. Escape from Jurassic Park instead of the prison. Fight a self righteous paladin instead of the bandit gang leader.
Kill a person out of revenge instead of for money. Resurrect your loved one instead of summoning a demon. Compete for the heart of the lady instead of the treasure.
She was thirty-two, her name was Aurelia, and she had been married eleven years. One Saturday afternoon, she looked through the kitchen window at the garden and saw the four horsemen of the Apocalypse. Men of the world, those four horsemen of the Apocalypse. And good-looking. The first from the left was riding a sorrel horse with a dark mane. He was wearing white breeches, black boots, a crimson jacket, and a yellow fez with black pompoms. The second one had a sleeveless tunic overlaid with gold and violet and was barefoot. He was riding on the back of a plump dolphin. The third one had a respectable, black beard, trimmed at right angles. He had donned a gray Prince of Wales suit, white shirt, blue tie and carried a black leather portfolio. He was seated on a folding chair belted to the back of white-haired dromedary. The fourth one made Aurelia smile and realize that they were smiling at her. He was riding a black and gold Harley-Davidson 1200 and was wearing a white helmet and dark goggles and had long, straight, blond hair flying in the wind behind him. The four were riding in the garden without moving from the spot. They rode and smiled at her and she watched them through the kitchen window.
In that manner, she finished washing the two teacups, took off her apron, arranged her hair and went to the living room.
"I saw the four horsemen of the Apocalypse in the garden," she told her husband.
"I'll bet," he said without raising his eyes from his paper.
"What are you reading?" Aurelia asked.
"Hmmm?"
"I said they were given a crown and a sword and a balance and power."
"Oh, right," said her husband.
And after that a week went by as all weeks do--very slowly at first and very quickly toward the end--and on Sunday morning, while she made the coffee, she again saw the four horsemen of the Apocalypse in the garden, but when she went back to the bedroom she didn't say anything to her husband.
The third time she saw them, one Wednesday, alone, in the afternoon, she stood looking at them for a half hour and finally, since she had always wanted to fly in a yellow and red dirigible; and since she had dreamed about being an opera singer, an emperor's lover, a co-pilot to Icarus; since she would have liked to scale black cliffs, laugh at cannibals, traverse the jungles on elephants with purple trappings, seize with her hands the diamonds that lay hidden in mines, preside in the nude over a parade of nocturnal monsters, live under water, domesticate spiders, torture the powerful of the earth, rob trains in the tunnels of the Alps, set palaces on fire, lie in the dark with beggars, climb on the bridges of all the ships in the world; finally--since it was sadly sterile to be a rational and healthy adult--finally, that Wednesday afternoon alone, she put on the long dress she had worn at the last New Year's party given by the company where her husband was assistant sales manager and went out to the garden. The four horsemen of the Apocalypse called her, the blond one on the Harley-Davidson gave her his hand and helped her up onto the seat behind him, and there they went, all five, raging into the storm and singing.
Two days later her husband gave in to family pressure and reported the disappearance of his wife.
"Moral: madness is a flower aflame," said the narrator. Or in other words, it's impossible to inflame the dead, cold, viscous, useless, and sinful ashes of common sense.
If you meet her on the street, cross quickly to the other side and quicken your pace. She’s a dangerous lady. She’s about forty or forty-five, has one married daughter and a son working in San Nicolas; her husband’s a sheet-metal worker. She rises very early, sweeps the sidewalk, sees her husband off, cleans, does the wash, shops, cooks. After lunch she watches television, sews or knits, irons twice a week, and at night goes to bed late. On Saturdays she does a general cleaning and washes windows and waxes the floors. On Sunday mornings she washes the clothes her son brings home—his name is Nestor Eduardo—she kneads dough for noodles or ravioli, and in the afternoon either her sister-inlaw comes to visit or she goes to her daughter’s house. It’s been a long time since she’s been to the movies, but she reads TV Guide and the police report in the newspaper. Her eyes are dark and her hands are rough and her hair is starting to go gray. She catches cold frequently and keeps a photo album in a dresser drawer along with a black crepe dress with lace collar and cuffs.
Her mother never hit her. But when she was six, she got a spanking for coloring on a door, and she had to wash it off with a wet rag. While she was doing it, she thought about doors, all doors, and decided that they were very dumb because they always led to the same places. And the one she was cleaning was definitely the dumbest of all, the one that led to her parents’ bedroom. She opened the door and then it didn’t go to her parents’ bedroom but to the Gobi desert. She wasn’t surprised that she knew it was the Gobi desert even though they hadn’t even taught her in school where Mongolia was and neither she nor her mother nor her grandmother had ever heard of Nan Shan or Khangai Nuru.
She stepped through the door, bent over to scratch the yellowish grit and saw that there was no one, nothing, and the hot wind tousled her hair, so she went back through the open door, closed it and kept on cleaning. And when she finished, her mother grumbled a little more and told her to wash the rag and take the broom to sweep up that sand and clean her shoes. That day she modified her hasty judgment about doors, though not completely, at least not until she understood what was going on.
What had been going on all her life and up until today was that from time to time doors behaved satisfactorily, though in general they were still acting dumb and leading to dining rooms, kitchens, laundry rooms, bedrooms and offices even in the best of circumstances. But two months after the desert, for example, the door that every day led to the bath opened onto the workshop of a bearded man dressed in a long uniform, pointed shoes, and a cap that tilted on one side of his head. The old man’s back was turned as he took something out of a highboy with many small drawers behind a very strange, large wooden machine with a giant steering wheel and screw, in the midst of cold air and an acrid smell. When he turned around and saw her he began to shout at her in a language she didn’t understand.
She stuck out her tongue, dashed out the door, closed it, opened it again, went into the bathroom and washed her hands for lunch.
Again, after lunch, many years later, she opened the door of her room and walked into a battlefield. She dipped her hands in the blood of the wounded and dead and pulled from the neck of a cadaver a crucifix that she wore for a long time under high-necked blouses or dresses without plunging necklines. She now keeps it in a tin box underneath the nightgowns with a brooch, a pair of earrings and a broken wristwatch that used to belong to her mother-in-law. In the same way, involuntarily and by chance, she visited three monasteries, seven libraries, and the highest mountains in the world, and who knows how many theaters, cathedrals, jungles, refrigeration plants, dens of vice, universities, brothels, forests, stores, submarines, hotels, trenches, islands, factories, palaces, hovels, towers and hell.
She’s lost count and doesn’t care; any door could lead anywhere and that has the same value as the thickness of the ravioli dough, her mother’s death, and the life crises that she sees on TV and reads about in TV Guide.
Not long ago she took her daughter to the doctor, and seeing the closed door of a bathroom in the clinic, she smiled. She wasn’t sure because she can never be sure, but she got up and went to the bathroom. However, it was a bathroom; at least there was a nude man in a bathtub full of water. It was all very large, with a high ceiling, marble floor and decorations hanging from the closed windows. The man seemed to be asleep in his white bathtub, short but deep, and she saw a razor on a wrought iron table with feet decorated with iron flowers and leaves and ending in lion’s paws, a razor, a mirror, a curling iron, towels, a box of talcum powder and an earthen bowl with water. She approached on tiptoe, retrieved the razor, tiptoed over to the sleeping man in the tub and beheaded him. She threw the razor on the floor and rinsed her hands in the lukewarm bathtub water. She turned around when she reached the clinic corridor and spied a girl going into the bathroom through the other door. Her daughter looked at her.
“That was quick.”
“The toilet was broken,” she answered.
A few days afterward, she beheaded another man in a blue tent at night. That man and a woman were sleeping mostly uncovered by the blankets of a low, king-size bed, and the wind beat around the tent and slanted the flames of the oil lamps. Beyond it there would be another camp, soldiers, animals, sweat, manure, orders and weapons. But inside there was a sword by the leather and metal uniforms, and with it she cut off the head of the bearded man. The woman stirred and opened her eyes as she went out the door on her way back to the patio that she had been mopping.
On Monday and Thursday afternoons, when she irons shirt collars, she thinks of the slit necks and the blood, and she waits. If it’s summer she goes out to sweep a little after putting away the clothing and until her husband arrives. If it’s windy she sits in the kitchen and knits. But she doesn’t always find sleeping men or staring cadavers. One rainy morning, when she was twenty, she was at a prison, and she made fun of the chained prisoners; one night when the kids were kids and were all living at home, she saw in a square a disheveled woman looking at a gun but not daring to take it out of her open purse. She walked up to her, put the gun in the woman’s hand and stayed there until a car parked at the corner, until the woman saw a man in gray get out and look for his keys in his pocket, until the woman aimed and fired. And another night while she was doing her sixth grade geography homework, she went to look for crayons in her room and stood next to a man who was crying on a balcony. The balcony was so high, so far above the street, that she had an urge to push him to hear the thud down below, but she remembered the orographic map of South America and was about to leave. Anyhow, since the man hadn’t seen her, she did push him and saw him disappear and ran to color in the map so she didn’t hear the thud, only the scream. And in an empty theater, she made a fire underneath the velvet curtain; in a riot she opened the cover to a basement hatchway; in a house, sitting on top of a desk, she shredded a two-thousand-page manuscript; in a clearing of a forest she buried the weapons of the sleeping men; in a river she opened the floodgates of a dike.
Her daughter’s name is Laura Inés, her son has a fiancée in San Nicolás and he’s promised to bring her over on Sunday so she and her husband can meet her. She has to remind herself to ask her sister-in-law for the recipe for orange cake, and Friday on TV is the first episode of a new soap opera. Again, she runs the iron over the front of the shirt and remembers the other side of the doors that are always carefully closed in her house, that other side where the things that happen are much less abominable than the ones we experience on this side, as you can easily understand.
The news spread fast. It would be correct to say that the news moved like a flaming trail of gunpowder, if it weren't for the fact that at this point in our civilization gunpowder was archaeology, ashes in time, the stuff of legend, nothingness. However, it was because of the magic of our new civilization that the news was known all over the world, practically instantaneously.
"Oooh!" the tsarina said.
You have to take into account that Her Gracious and Most Illustrious Virgin Majesty Ekaterina V, Empress of Holy Russia, had been carefully educated in the proper decorum befitting the throne, which meant that she would never have even raised an eyebrow or curved the corner of her lip, far less would she have made an interjection of that rude and vulgar kind. But not only did she say "Oooh!," she also got up and walked through the room until she reached the glass doors of the great balcony. She stopped there. Down below, covered by snow, Saint Leninburg was indifferent and unchanged, the city's eyes squinting under the weight of winter. At the palace, ministers and advisers were excited, on edge.
"And where is this place?" the tsarina asked.
And that is what happened in Russia, which is such a distant and atypical country. In the central states of the continent, there was real commotion. In Bolivia, in Paraguay, in Madagascar, in all the great powers, and in the countries that aspired to be great powers, such as High Peru, Iceland, or Morocco, hasty conversations took place at the highest possible level with knitted brows and hired experts. The strongest currencies became unstable: the guarani rose, the Bolivian peso went down half a point, the crown was discreetly removed from the exchange rates for two long hours, long queues formed in front of the exchanges in front of all the great capitals of the world. President Morillo spoke from the Oruro Palace and used the opportunity to make a concealed warning (some would call it a threat) to the two Peruvian republics and the Minas Gerais secessionist area. Morillo had handed over the presidency of Minas to his nephew, Pepe Morillo, who had proved to be a wet blanket whom everybody could manipulate, and now Morillo bitterly regretted his decision. Morocco and Iceland did little more than give their diplomats a gentle nudge in the ribs, anything to shake them into action, as they imagined them all to be sipping grenadine and mango juice in the deep south while servants in shiny black uniforms stood over them with fans.
The picturesque note came from the Independent States of North America. It could not have been otherwise. Nobody knew that all the states were now once again under the control of a single president, but that's how it was: some guy called Jack Jackson-Franklin, who had been a bit-part actor in videos, and who, aged eighty-seven, had discovered his extremely patriotic vocation of statesman. Aided by his singular and inexplicable charisma, and by his suspect family tree, according to which he was the descendent of two presidents who had ruled over the states during their glory days, he had managed to unify, at least for now, the seventy-nine northern states. Anyway, Mr. Jackson-Franklin said to the world that the Independent States would not permit such a thing to take place. No more, just that they would not permit such a thing to take place. The world laughed uproariously at this.
Over there, in the Saint Leninburg palace, ministers cleared their throats, advisers swallowed saliva, trying to find out if, by bobbing their Adam's apples up and down enough, they might be able to loosen their stiff official shirts.
"Ahem. Ahem. It's in the south. A long way to the south. In the west, Your Majesty."
"It is. Humph. Ahem. It is, Your Majesty, a tiny country in a tiny territory."
"It says that it is in Argentina," the tsarina said, still staring through the window but without paying any attention to the night as it fell over the snow-covered roofs and the frozen shores of the Baltic.
"Ah, yes, that's right, that's right, Your Majesty, a pocket republic."
Sergei Vasilievich Kustkarov, some kind of councilor and, what is more, an educated and sensible man, broke into the conversation.
"Several, Your Majesty, it is several."
And at last the tsarina turned around. Who cared a fig for the Baltic night, the snow-covered rooftops, the roofs themselves, and the city of which they were a part? Heavy silk crackled, starched petticoats, lace.
"Several of what, Councilor Kustkarov, several of what? Don't come to me with your ambiguities."
"I must say, Your Majesty, I had not the slightest intention--"
"Several of what?"
The tsarina looked directly at him, her lips held tightly together, her hands moving unceasingly, and Kustkarov panicked, as well he might.
"Rep-rep-republics, Your Majesty," he blurted out. "Several of them. Apparently, a long time ago, a very long time, it used to be a single territory, and now it is several, several republics, but their inhabitants, the people who live in all of them, all of the republics, are called, they call themselves, the people, that is, Argentinians."
The tsarina turned her gaze away. Kustkarov felt so relieved that he was encouraged to carry on speaking:
"There are seven of them, Your Majesty: Rosario, Entre dos Rios, Ladocta, Ona, Riachuelo, Yujujuy, and Labodegga."
The tsarina sat down.
"We must do something," she said.
Silence. Outside it was not snowing, but inside it appeared to be. The tsarina looked at the transport minister.
"This enters into your portfolio," she said.
Kustkarov sat down, magnificently. How lucky he was to be a councilor, a councilor with no specific duties. The transport minister, on the other hand, turned pale.
"I think, Your Majesty...," he dared to say.
"Don't think! Do something!"
"Yes, Your Majesty," the minister said, and, bowing, started to make his way to the door.
"Where do you think you're going?" the tsarina said, without moving her mouth or twitching an eyelid.
"I'm just, I'm going, I'm just going to see what can be done, Your Majesty."
There's nothing that can be done, Sergei Vasilievich thought in delight, nothing. He realized that he was not upset, but instead he felt happy. And on top of everything else a woman, he thought. Kustkarov was married to Irina Waldoska-Urtiansk, a real beauty, perhaps the most beautiful woman in all of Holy Russia. Perhaps he was being cuckolded; it would have been all too easy for him to find that out, but he did not want to. His thoughts turned in a circle: and on top of everything else a woman. He looked at the tsarina and was struck, not for the first time, by her beauty. She was not so beautiful as Irina, but she was magnificent.
In Rosario it was not snowing, not because it was summer, although it was, but because it never snowed in Rosario. And there weren't any palm trees: the Moroccans would have been extremely disappointed had they known, but their diplomats said nothing about the Rosario flora in their reports, partly because the flora of Rosario was now practically nonexistent, and partly because diplomats are supposed to be above that kind of thing.
Everyone who was not a diplomat, that is to say, everyone, the population of the entire republic that in the last ten years had multiplied vertiginously and had now reached almost two hundred thousand souls, was euphoric, happy, triumphant. They surrounded her house, watched over her as she slept, left expensive imported fruits outside her door, followed her down the street. Some potentate allowed her the use of a Ford 99, which was one of the five cars in the whole country, and a madman who lived in the Espinillos cemetery hauled water all the way up from the Pará lagoon and grew a flower for her which he then gave her.
"How nice," she said, then went on, dreamily, "Will there be flowers where I'm going?"
They assured her that there would be.
She trained every day. As they did not know exactly what it was she had to do to train herself, she got up at dawn, ran around the Independence crater, skipped, did some gymnastic exercises, ate little, learned how to hold her breath, and spent hours and hours sitting or curled into strange positions. She also danced the waltz. She was almost positive that the waltz was not likely to come in handy, but she enjoyed it very much.
Meanwhile, farther away, the trail of gunpowder had become a barrel of dynamite, although dynamite was also a legendary substance and didn't exist. The infoscreens in every country, whether poor or rich, central or peripheral, developed or not, blazed forth with extremely large headlines suggesting dates, inventing biographical details, trying to hide, without much success, their envy and confusion. No one was fooled:
"We have been wretchedly beaten," the citizens of Bolivia said.
"Who would have thought it," pondered the man on the Reykjavík omnibus.
The former transport minister of Holy Russia was off breaking stones in Siberia. Councilor Sergei Vasilievich Kustkarov was sleeping with the tsarina, but that was only a piece of low, yet spicy, gossip that has nothing to do with this story.
"We will not allow this to happen!" Mr. Jackson-Franklin blustered, tugging nervously at his hairpiece. "It is our own glorious history that has set aside for us this brilliant destiny! It is we, we and not this despicable banana republic, who are marked for this glory!"
Mr. Jackson-Franklin also did not know that there were no palm trees or bananas in Rosario, but this was due not to a lack of reports from his diplomats but rather a lack of diplomats. Diplomats are a luxury that a poor country cannot afford, and so poor countries often go to great pains to take offense and recall all the knights commanders and lawyers and doctors and even eventually the generals working overseas, in order to save money on rent and electricity and gas and salaries, not to mention the cost of the banquets and all the money in brown paper envelopes.
But the headlines kept on appearing on the infoscreens: "Argentinian Astronaut Claims She Will Reach Edge of Universe," "Sources Claim Ship Is Spaceworthy in Spite of or Because of Centuries-Long Interment," "Science or Catastrophe?," "Astronaut Not a Woman but a Transsexual" (this in the Imperialskaya Gazeta, the most puritan of the infoscreens, even more so than the Papal Piccolo Osservatore Lombardo), "Ship Launches," "First Intergalactic Journey in Centuries," "We Will Not Allow This to Happen!" (Portland Times).
She was dancing the waltz. She woke up with her heart thumping, tried out various practical hairstyles, ran, skipped, drank only filtered water, ate only olives, avoided spies and journalists, went to see the ship every day, just to touch it. The mechanics all adored her.
"It'll work, they'll see, it'll work," the chief engineer said defiantly.
Nobody contradicted him. No one dared say that it wouldn't.
It would make it, of course it would make it. Not without going through many incredible adventures on its lengthy journey. Lengthy? No one knew who Langevin was anymore, so no one was shocked to discover that his theory contradicted itself, ended up biting its own tail, and that however long the journey took, the observers would only perceive it as having lasted minutes. Someone called Cervantes, a very famous personage back in the early years of human civilization--it was still debated whether he had been a physicist, a poet, or a musician--had suggested a similar theory in one of his lost works.
One autumn dawn the ship took off from the Independence crater, the most deserted part of the whole desert republic of Rosario, at five forty-five in the morning. The exact time is recorded because the inhabitants of the country had all pitched in together to buy a clock, which they thought the occasion deserved (there was one other clock, in the Enclosed Convent of the Servants of Santa Rita de Casino, but because the convent was home to an enclosed order nothing ever went in or out of it, no news, no requests, no answers, no nothing). Unfortunately, they had not had enough money. But then someone had had the brilliant idea which had brought in the money they needed, and Rosario had hired out its army for parades in friendly countries: there weren't that many of them and the ones there were weren't very rich, but they managed to get the cash together. Anyone who was inspired by patriotism and by the proximity of glory had to see those dashing officers, those disciplined soldiers dressed in gold and crimson, protected by shining breastplates, capped off with plumed helmets, their catapults and pouches of stones at their waists, goose-stepping through the capital of Entre Dos Rios or the Padrone Giol vineyards in Labodegga, at the foot of the majestic Andes.
The ship blasted off. It got lost against the sky. Before the inhabitants of Rosario, their hearts in their throats and their eyes clouded by emotion, had time to catch their breath, a little dot appeared up there, getting bigger and bigger, and it was the ship coming back down. It landed at 06:11 on the same morning of that same autumn day. The clock that recorded this is preserved in the Rosario Historical Museum. It no longer works, but anyone can go and see it in its display cabinet in Room A of the Museum. In Room B, in another display case, is the so-called Carballensis Indentic Axe, the fatal tool that cut down all the vegetation of Rosario and turned the whole country into a featureless plain. Good and evil, side by side, shoulder to shoulder.
Twenty-six minutes on Earth, many years on board the ship. Obviously, she did not have a watch or a calendar with her: the republic of Rosario would not have been able to afford either of them. But it was many years, she knew that much.
Leaving the galaxy was a piece of cake. You can do it in a couple of jumps, everyone knows that, following the instructions that Albert Einsteinstein, the multifaceted violin virtuoso, director of sci-fi movies, and student of space-time, gave us a few hundred years back. But the ship did not set sail to the very center of the universe, as its predecessors had done in the great era of colonization and discovery; no, the ship went right to the edge of the universe.
Everyone also knows that there is nothing in the universe, not even the universe itself, which does not grow weaker as you reach its edge. From pancakes to arteries, via love, rubbers, photographs, revenge, bridal gowns, and power. Everything tends to imperceptible changes at the beginning, rapid change afterward; everything at the edge is softer and more blurred, as the threads start to fray from the center to the outskirts.
In the time it took her to take a couple of breaths, a breath and a half, over the course of many years, she passed through habitable and uninhabitable places, worlds which had once been classified as existent, worlds which did not appear and had never appeared and probably would never appear in any cartographical survey. Planets of exiles, singing sands, minutes and seconds in tatters, whirlpools of nothingness, space junk, and that's without even mentioning those beings and things, all of which stood completely outside any possibility of description, so much so that we tend not to perceive them when we look at them; all of this, and shock, and fear more than anything else, and loneliness. The hair grew gray at her temples, her flesh lost its firmness, wrinkles appeared around her eyes and her mouth, her knees and ankles started to act up, she slept less than before and had to half close her eyes and lean backward in order to make out the numbers on the consoles. And she was so tired that it was almost unbearable. She did not waltz any longer: she put an old tape into an old machine and listened and moved her gray head in time with the orchestra.
She reached the edge of the universe. Here was where everything came to an end, so completely that even her tiredness disappeared and she felt once again as full of enthusiasm as she had when she was younger. There were hints, of course: salt storms, apparitions, little brushstrokes of white against the black of space, large gaps made of sound, echoes of long-dead voices that had died giving sinister orders, ash, drums; but when she reached the edge itself, these indications gave way to space signage: "End," "You Are Reaching the Universe Limits," "The Cosmos General Insurance Company, YOUR Company, Says: GO NO FURTHER," "End of Protected Cosmonaut Space," etc., as well as the scarlet polygon that the OMUU had adopted to use as a sign for that's it, abandon all hope, the end.
All right, so she was here. The next thing to do was go back. But the idea of going back never occurred to her. Women are capricious creatures, just like little boys: as soon as they get what they want, then they want something else. She carried on.
There was a violent judder as she crossed the limit. Then there was silence, peace, calm. All very alarming, to tell the truth. The needles did not move, the lights did not flash, the ventilation system did not hiss, her alveoli did not vibrate, her chair did not swivel, the screens were blank. She got up, went to the portholes, looked out, saw nothing. It was logical enough:
"Of course," she said to herself, "when the universe comes to an end, then there's nothing."
She looked out through the portholes a little more, just in case. She still could see nothing, but she had an idea.
"But I'm here," she said. "Me and the ship."
She put on a space suit and walked out into the nothing.
When the ship landed in the Independence crater in the republic of Rosario, twenty-six minutes after it had taken off, when the hatch opened and she appeared on the ramp, the spirit of Paul Langevin flew over the crater, laughing fit to burst. The only people who heard him were the madman who had grown the flower for her in the Espinillos cemetery and a woman who was to die that day. No one else had ears or fingers or tongue or feet, far less did they have eyes to see him.
It was the same woman who had left, the very same, and this calmed the crowds down at the same time as it disappointed them, all the inhabitants of the country, the diplomats, the spies, and the journalists. It was only when she came down the gangplank and they came closer to her that they saw the network of fine wrinkles around her eyes. All other signs of her old age had vanished, and had she wished, she could have waltzed tirelessly, for days and nights on end, from dusk till dawn till dusk.
The journalists all leaned forward; the diplomats made signals, which they thought were subtle and unseen, to the bearers of their sedan chairs to be ready to take them back to their residences as soon as they had heard what she had to say; the spies took photographs with the little cameras hidden away in their shirt buttons or their wisdom teeth; all the old people put their hands together; the men raised their fists to their heart; the little boys pranced; the young girls smiled.
And then she told them what she had seen:
"I took off my suit and my helmet," she said, "and walked along the invisible avenues that smelled of violets."
She did not know that the whole world was waiting to hear what she said; that Ekaterina V had made Sergei Vasilievich get up at five o'clock in the morning so that he could accompany her to the grand salon and wait there for the news; that one of the seventy-nine Northern States had declared its independence because the president had not stopped anything from happening or obtained any glory, and this had lit the spark of rebellion in the other seventy-eight states, and this had made Mr. Jackson-Franklin leave the White House without his wig, in pajamas, freezing and furious; that Bolivia, Paraguay, and Iceland had allowed the two Peruvian republics to join their new alliance and defense treaty set up against a possible attack from space; that the high command of the Paraguayan aeronautical engineers had promised to build a ship that could travel beyond the limits of the universe, always assuming that they could be granted legal immunity and a higher budget, a declaration that made the guarani fall back the two points that it had recently risen and then another one as well; that Don Schicchino Giol, the new padrone of the Republic of Labodegga at the foot of the majestic Andes had been woken from his most recent drinking bout to be told that he had now to sign a declaration of war against the Republic of Rosario, now that they knew the strength of the enemy's forces.
"Eh? What? Hunh?" Don Schicchino said.
"I saw the nothingness of everything," she said, "and it was all infused with the unmistakable smell of wood violets. The nothingness of the world is like the inside of a stomach throbbing above your head. The nothingness of people is like the back of a painting, black, with glasses and wires that release dreams of order and imperfect destinies. The nothingness of creatures with leathery wings is a crack in the air and the rustle of tiny feet. The nothingness of history is the massacre of the innocents. The nothingness of words, which is a throat and a hand that break whatever they touch on perforated paper; the nothingness of music, which is music. The nothingness of precincts, of crystal glasses, of seams, of hair, of liquids, of lights, of keys, of food."
When she had finished her list, the potentate who owned the Ford 99 said that he would give it to her, and that in the afternoon he would send one of his servants with a liter of naphtha so that she could take the car out for a spin.
"Thank you," she said. "You are very generous."
The madman went away, looking up to the skies; who knows what he was searching for. The woman who was going to die that day asked herself what she should eat on Sunday, when her sons and their wives came to lunch. The president of the Republic of Rosario gave a speech.
And everything in the world carried on the same, apart from the fact that Ekaterina V named Kustkarov her interior minister, which terrified the poor man but which was welcomed with open arms by Irina as an opportunity for her to refresh her wardrobe and her stock of lovers. And Jack Jackson-Franklin sold his memoirs to one of Paraguay's more sophisticated magazines for a stellar amount of money, which allowed him to retire to live in Imerina. And six spaceships from six major world powers set off to the edges of the universe and were never seen again.
She married a good man who had a house with a balcony, a white bicycle, and a radio which, on clear days, could pick up the radio plays that LLL1 Radio Magnum transmitted from Entre Dos Rios, and she waltzed in white satin shoes. The day that her first son was born a very pale green shoot grew out of the ground on the banks of the great lagoon.
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