Welcome back, friends. Last time, we talked about the basics of the main gameplay systems involving doing work around the farm, and introduced two characters: Professor Cain and his assistant Fran. This time, we're going to talk about the social system of the game. It's not social in the way of playing with other players, but rather you can socialize with the other characters in the game.

Since we don't travel around to different cities or worlds in this game, we interact with the same characters over and over. The residents of Forgotten Valley will often repeat the same thing each day, or say something unique if they're doing something unique at the moment. This seems like it would get very tedious, but as we befriend each character, they will start saying new things, and we'll open up opportunities to see cutscenes involving the characters, too!

All characters have a hidden value called Friendship Points (FP) that is modified by your interactions with them. Talking to them each day will raise FP slightly. But we can raise it even more by giving gifts. When you talk to a character while holding an item in your hands, the item will be given to the character as a gift. Each character has their own reaction to different items, so there isn't one type of item that works for everyone. If you give someone an item they dislike, their FP can drop. Since the value is hidden, you have to judge how well the gift was received based on the character's reaction. There are even specific items that each character loves a lot and hates a lot, which will strongly raise or lower their FP when you give them!

Love interests like Professor Cain also have a second hidden value called Love Points (LP). Unlike in SaGa games, the characters won't die if their LP drops to 0. They'll just not love you at all.

LP raises and lowers similarly to FP, but is somewhat visible to the player through the form of the Heart Icon. If you look at the screenshot of Cain above, you'll notice a small, grey heart in the bottom right corner of the screen. Once you hit certain milestones in LP, this heart will change to brighter colors and start pulsating more. Once you've reached a big, red heart, that means that character is in love with you.

When we start the game, whenever we talk to Fran, she'll complain about how her work at the excavation site is fun, but it hurts her back. After talking to her for a while and giving her some fish, she starts asking us to show her if we find anything interesting while we're digging ourselves.

After visiting the excavation site for a few days, we end up getting a cutscene with Cain when we enter! Let's see how it goes. Often during scenes, especially with love interests, you will be given dialogue options. I'll put options that we didn't choose with strikethrough so you can at least see there was an option there. I'm not the best translator, but I'll try to make it sound natural. Also, often the player character will talk through little emoticons instead of text, so if you just see some punctuation or something where it seems like they should have said something, that's why.

And now we've seen our first love interest event! These events are often referred to as Heart Events, as generally there is one special scene to find per color of heart icon based on FP.

The first scenes are generally pretty basic and just give you a very basic idea of what the characters are like. Here we see that Cain likes items... lol. I wonder where exactly he got his necklace from, though.

Overall, though, I like Cain a lot. He's quite handsome (you know I love them rectangle heads and glasses) and very passionate about what he does and what he is interested in. This scene makes it feel like he might be hitting on you, but at the same time, he might just be blabbing about accessories and digging because he loves it so much. Though he does straight up ask you to be his assistant, so it's probably a bit of both. I don't mind being hit on by a handsome older fella like this, though.

It's also interesting that Fran being gone is a significant part of the scene. It's almost like he's waiting for her to be gone to hit on you. Maybe he's a bit of a creeper and hits on everyone, but where the others can't see.

Depending on the dialogue options you choose, the characters' reactions will be different, and you can raise or lower their FP (and in the case of love interests, LP, too!) during the event. It's usually a pretty significant change, so these events are important to watch out for.

So where can we go if we want to make more friends and experience more of the social system? The bar, of course!

Here we have one of the bartenders, Mu, also known as Muffy. Mu is super adorable and is one of the potential love interests in the original Colobocle Station like Fran, as well as one of the possible love interests in Wonderful Life. She's originally from the city, but something happened and she wanted to get away. I don't think it's ever really expanded on in this game, but she has more of a story in Wonderful Life. She wandered to Forgotten Valley alone and was given a job and a place to live in the bar's attic by its owner.

She's very friendly and outgoing, as well as quite flirtatious, but she's more complex than she seems at first.

!!! LOVE INTEREST ALERT !!!

That barkeep that gave Mu a new home and job is none other than the all-in-one package, the beautiful, the lovely... Garred!

Known as Griffin in the localization, Garred is by far my favorite love interest in the entire series. He's pretty much one of my "ideal" types in both looks and personality. He has a long face with a huge nose, a gorgeously full mustache, long hair, a stubbly chin, and even a hairy chest. He's super relaxed and friendly, and he's very focused on making sure other people feel comfortable and welcome.

His compassionate heart can already be seen from how he took in Mu when she had no idea where to go and offered her work and a home, even letting her stay in his own bar.

When we talk to him behind the counter, he talks about how he wants to make the Blue Bar a place where people can come to forget about their troubles, as relaxation is also an important part of life.

It's almost impossible to see Garred upset about anything, as he always has such a relaxed demeanor, which makes it very easy to relax around him.

We're also able to buy drinks from Garred at the bar. There's a variety of them with a small range in prices (between 250-400 gold, I think) but they all do about the same thing -- just raise Stamina a little. At least, as far as I can tell. We can even order water at the bar if we want to.

And having a drink from the bar actually brings one of the Colobocles back! Spry thanks us and returns to the treehouse. We're supposed to be rescuing them by working hard on the farm, but so far we've rescued them by staring at a pond and grabbing a drink with the hot bartenders.

While there's no one else at the bar at the moment, it's not uncommon to find 3 or 4 other patrons having drinks as well, and we can come back throughout the night to see if other people pop in. Cain comes here now and then, too. I'm surprised everyone doesn't come every night just to drool over Garred, though.

So we'll have to look elsewhere to meet someone else right now...

South of the bar there's an area with a little lake where there aren't really any roads between the buildings. A bit north of the lake, we can find the laboratory of Gryll, who looks like some kind of mad scientist type. His lab looks like a huge mess, just like his hair, but he says he knows where everything is and each item has its own place. He's a little eccentric and rough around the edges, but we're going to try befriending him anyway.

Befriending people isn't just about seeing new daily dialogues and triggering events. There are some nice rewards we get through our friendships, too! You'll have to wait to find out what kind of nifty stuff we can get until later, though.

That's all I have to say about the social systems for today, so let's get a little update on what's been going on around the farm. Actually, not too much has really happened yet -- the first turnips came in (and I forgot to screencap them...) so I planted some more alongside the potatoes we bought from Carly. Potatoes take many more days of watering before they'll become ready for harvest compared to turnips.

But this screenshot is also an excellent opportunity to point out something about the Stamina system that I missed last time! I said that Stamina and Fatigue are hidden values, so it sounds like it would be really tough to know how much work you can really do before passing out. But it's not so hard to tell! There are many visual clues your character will perform to show you how tired you're getting. At first it's just stuff like wiping their brow or panting for a bit, but eventually they'll start toppling over.

When Fatigue gets high enough, your face will even turn blue and the music will start to play strangely and out-of-tune. This is a big warning that you're about to pass out if you do too much more work!

Well, I hope you had fun learning about Cain and Fran, meeting Garred, Mu, and Gryll, and learning about the social system. Now that the two major systems are out of the way, we'll start meeting more characters, finding more events, and making more progress on the farm.

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