“No one should be calling me a "hero".”
Remember how I said I’d finish these Luminaria reviews back in the second half of 2024? It’s 2025…hehe, oops. To be fair, I keep having to hold off on writing them because I was so busy with other things. I finally found some time to squeeze them in. If you’re wondering how I can still watch the Luminaria episodes when the game shut down two years ago, a certain Youtube channel still has the episodes up. Click here if you want to watch!
Ed’s second episode is pretty straightforward. He gets a dream about how he was supposed to protect Miasui, and he laments over it. Dolganore gets a monster infestation and the Adventurers cull them but also find out that the source comes from a mine where a Reactor had been used and causing the monsters to be out of control. Despite Edouard’s apathy, he plays hero and does get rewarded for it at the end.
This is such a nice introspective for Edouard. He seems apathetic but it was because he had to deal with not being able to protect Miasui and had to run away. This entire episode was him wanting to make amends for what he wasn’t able to do before, showing off his softie side that Lydie always points out. He also was a bit of a life mentor to Ana-Maria who tags along with him and Raoul into the mine. While Ana-Maria is empathetic due to her sheltered lifestyle, Ed teaches her that life’s not about that and that she needs to make crucial decisions, even if it means making someone, human or beast, lose their lives. The combination of Raoul and Ana-Maria is pretty interesting because they’re technically the three oldest characters in the group, so it makes for interesting dynamics. It sucks that Lydie doesn’t do much in this episode other than being medic to the injured, but it makes sense given that this is an Edouard episode and it’s all about him.
I feel like Charles was at his absolute worst here. He just makes the worst judgments for Raoul and Ed and it really got annoying. Yes, I get that he only cares about Ana-Maria and that he’s not entirely human, but sheesh, have some humanity, will you? Like, humans are able to have multiple sides, but Charles keeps boxing Raoul into believing he’s lazy and slacks off a lot while he thinks Ed being heroic is out of character. This is why I absolutely despise him.
I think my favorite part about this episode was that there’s a vendor who gives you a recipe, but he’s lying down. Imagine someone giving you cooking tips while lying down while you’re injured or just lying down to pretend you’re hurt.
Other than that, this was a very battle-heavy Adventurers episode and the last one before the server shut down. It sucks that we will never see Ed go back to Miasui to take back his homeland. It would’ve been interesting to see his character development.
Tales of Luminaria is an upcoming Tales of Series original title for iOS and Android released November 2021. The game was first announced during Gamescom Opening Night Live. Unlike the recent Tales mobile games, Luminaria has been reported to have its own original world with only original characters and no previous Tales characters, as well as an English dub. Unfortunately, the game has announced termination of service worldwide on July 19, 2022.
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