That said, back to my next post on Radiant Tale. Beware of spoilers ahead!
After my premature common route ending due to spreading my affection points across too many characters, I knew I wanted to choose between Zafora and Ion. The random Paschalia scenes I got didn't leave me feeling like I knew the character any better, and Zafora and Ion both had intriguing story hooks between Zafora trying to reclaim his father's title and Ion's past as a slave gladiator. I thought I might play through some of Ion's early scenes and then double back to Zafora if he ended up interesting me more, but after I finished my first city exploration with Ion on my second playthrough I knew.
I had to play Zafora. Not resolving his story was bugging the heck out of me, so I left the Ion save alone for a later playthrough and replayed through the common route more cautiously on a new save. This time I made different choices where I'd messed up before (which made up for all those times I accidentally wound up with Paschalia scenes), and finally was rewarded with the last chapter of the common route segueing into the Zafora specific route.
The fact that Zafora ended up being the guy I wanted to play the most surprised me. Going into the game I knew he was the clown, and even if his jester outfit is more Cirque du Soleil than Ringling Bros, I just couldn't see myself romancing one. Even if there's an art to performing a good pratfall, clowns were my least favorite part of the circus as a kid, and it didn't help that Zafora is one of the most acerbic characters I've ever met.
And that's probably why of all the characters, his backstory is explored first. If the game didn't put Zafora's personality in context, even players who normally like a guy who runs hot and cold would probably rather romance someone else. But learning so much about him so early is likely what hooked me. I was trying to keep an open mind about the other characters, but as I passed into chapters 3 and 4 I realized that I was having a lot of fun with him.
Zafora is a character who values honesty, which likely stems from his uncle's betrayal in his backstory. So when selecting answers for Tifalia, it's fun to be able to choose competitive answers such as refusing to go easy on him the very first time she gets to play a board game with him. Going full blast earns affection with him, while he ends up disappointed and irritated if she tries to go easy on him.
Cultura is the second city CIRCUS visits on their kingdom-wide tour, and most citizens are cowering in their houses due to the mysterious Lunatic Riots, that drive an ordinary person to violence without warning. While there, the group learn that the governor of Cultura is normally a hereditary position (where other city governors are appointed by the capital) with the badass title of Labyrinth Sentinel, since the necklace worn by the sentinel allows them to manipulate the labyrinth that everyone in Cultura is able to navigate with aid from the local wind spirits.
The current Labyrinth Sentinel, Balto, also happens to be Zafora's uncle, who gained the position by murdering Zafora's parents three years prior. Zafora fled after learning what happened, but joined CIRCUS with the intention of asking the king for a magical artifact called Erase that is the only thing that can forcefully separate a sentinel from their necklace. Erase was created in the event a sentinel ever went rogue, but Zafora's problem is that he has no proof that Balto committed the murder (other than his uncle told him he did it) and Balto is currently the legally installed sentinel recognized by the king in Artheir.
By the time the team leaves, Zafora knows he can't work alone, and while the CIRCUS performance in Cultura is nominally about the Great Wind Spirit Libera, by the end of it, it's really Zafora asking the people of Cultura to join him.
That isn't to say he suddenly becomes warm and snuggly, because the guy can't admit he bought good-bye presents for everyone and would rather pretend he's giving away some junk he picked up from his information broker job, but once we know it's just Zafora being awkward and not that he's a jerk, it's much easier to take his barbs.
After the common route ends though, there's a bit of a stumble, which I suspect was probably due to different writers handling the two routes. The common route makes it clear that Zafora's wish is to obtain Erase, but after his route starts, he instead shares a petition put together by the citizens of Cultura to have Balto stand down. The king acknowledges it and sends one of his aides to inform Balto that he's being stripped of his position.
Of course we know it's not going to be that easy, and in the meantime CIRCUS gets ready to perform again because Colivus is still child-sized rather than the teenager he ought to be, so they're hoping to give him the confidence to grow up by joining them in their performances. A lot of this route runs parallels between Zafora and Colivus, who are both heirs to their position, and Colivus sees Zafora as someone to look up to and possibly emulate.
Mind, this is a world with only one kingdom so there is no outside threat and the king currently has a rebelling governor on his hands. This is the situation Erase was crafted specifically for!
Instead Colivus volunteers to do it, even though his magic hasn't fully come back yet. Everyone just kinda hopes he'll figure it out as CIRCUS ends up going back to Cultura. It's not the smartest plan, and Colivus nearly exhausts himself with his daily attempts once they arrive, so I couldn't help but be a bit irritated that the king would rather sit on his duff and leave this up to his still recovering son rather than do it himself. (At least in Vilio's route they give the excuse that King Vigonia's mana is not actually powerful enough to make the bullets.)
This early to middle section of Zafora's route was on the weak side for me. Because Zafora is preparing to take back the title of sentinel, he's often "busy" doing some nebulous task that we rarely learn the details of, so we never get invested in what he's doing. Instead Tifalia spends a lot of time wondering how she can help Zafora because he's working so hard, which usually isn't that romantic. Zafora has two CGs in scenes where the man is either in dire need of rest or has already fallen asleep. Then on top of that, Balto lures Colivus away and when Tifalia comes to rescue him, the two of them are blasted so far by the Labyrinth Necklace's wind magic that they end up in another city.
It's possible to do a romance route where the protagonist and her love interest are separated for a period of time, but I didn't feel like the stakes were high enough that the characters were threatened by the situation. Zafora is okay, he can't leave Cultura due to the wind barrier Balto put up, but he's otherwise perfectly fine and Balto hasn't made any other moves. Meanwhile, Tifalia is safe in Oriens, which is far away so she's in no immediate danger. Yes, being separated is sad and disappointing for them, but with no sense of peril there's no sense of urgency. With the Relay Chalices they're able to talk with each other so there's no wondering about what's happening to their other half while they're separated.
And in the end, Vilio just shows up at Oriens and flies her and Colivus back, using Colivus's magic to break through the wind barrier. The only thing critical to the story that happened while they were gone was that Colivus figured out the mental block that was preventing him from crafting the bullets, so he's confident he can make them after he gets back. Breaking the barrier would drain his mana though, so Tifalia and Zafora plan out another performance in Cultura. If they can bloom another Flora this will recharge Colivus's mana and he can make the bullets.
But it just felt like so much busywork for very little pay-off. Colivus could have had his epiphany in Cultura since it wasn't tied to anything specifically in Oriens, and just a conversation with Tifalia, but I guess if he wasn't kicked out so he could drain his mana it would have made the route too short.
Despite being annoyed with the side trip, I felt fairly good about the writing around Zafora himself, except once they began preparing for CIRCUS's next performance. He sends a message to his uncle in the form of a bet, proposing that if CIRCUS brings joy to the people, his uncle surrenders his position, and if CIRCUS fails, they will leave.
For some reason he thinks Balto will be unable to resist accepting, when CIRCUS has already performed well enough that they got a Flora to bloom the last time they were here. Considering that they've already done it in the common route, when people were terrified of their neighbors suddenly becoming violent criminals, it seems hard to expect them to fail when the current problem is that they have a rogue Labyrinth Sentinel who has put them out of work.
Why would his uncle accept a losing bet?
And in any case, the real point of the performance is to bloom the Flora so Colivus can craft the bullets, which clearly means that Zafora is still expecting to shoot Erase, so he probably knew his uncle wouldn't honor the agreement. Though there is a lot of optimism in Radiant Tale, I'm glad they don't try to redeem Balto.
In fact, he doesn't even survive the final confrontation.
The only innately dark part of Radiant Tale is the existence of the fiends, and even perky Vilio is adamant that a possessed person cannot be saved, and they will eventually turn into a fiend themselves.
Balto being possessed made his actions and ongoing disregard for the city's well-being make a lot more sense. This also allowed him to be killed with impunity without characters yammering about morality and saving him, and I like that the game addresses what this does to Zafora, who will never get a proper sense of closure as to why his uncle killed his parents. Arguably he wouldn't have even if Balto had remained alive, but it still colors his victory with a sense of loss.
I also have to add that I liked Tifilia's assistance in helping Zafora shoot Erase. It would have been really easy to make the moment a case of point and shoot with a badass speech or pose, but when Balto's wind magic tears up Zafora's arms it was nice for Tifalia to step in and help him aim, making it more of a duo action than Zafora solving the problem entirely by himself.
Which is why the epilogue infuriated me, because we find Tifalia a year later working back at Liber, and we find out that Zafora hasn't so much as sent her a letter in an entire year. He's lucky that she doesn't tell him to sleep outside when he finally shows up, though it would have been nice if the game had made it clear that he was supposed to reach out to her when he was ready for her to join him.
In fact, she came home right after Cultura since the epilogue pulls a "Surprise, Colivus started growing again. Looks like making the bullets unblocked everything!" So maybe she just went home to be out of his way? Because I don't know why she would have even left.
Aside from that, while I can understand her being upset at him for not contacting her after a year, did she try contacting him? That doesn't excuse Zafora, for just… not writing… but the facepalming goes both ways in this scene. At least she doesn't take it lying down. She does get mad at him, especially with his weak excuse of not knowing what to say to her, and Zafora, being crappy at expressing himself, manages to dig himself in deeper when trying to ask her to live with him. That it came across as him hiring her for a job only to get her pissed at him was icing on the cake.
Despite that, I did like his romance. Maybe not all the plot portions of his route, but the game did succeed in making me fall in love with a clown, which is the best thing I can say about it.
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