It’s been a little over a week since SINoALICE Global shut down. I had originally planned to play the final chapter on the 13th, but had to punt it to the very last full day, the 14th. I had been using Global’s in-game archive of story content as translations while playing through Act of Elimination in JP, and wasn’t able to finish on the 13th. I did so on the following day, and then, it was time for the ending.
During those past few days, I sent some goodbye messages to a handful of co-op buddies who were still around, thanked my wonderful guildmates, and continued saving what I could for posterity. The final chapter was a straightforward affair, with Alice being the only possible playable character, and wrapped up the story in a very Yoko Taro fashion. In the JellicleCats Discord, microtia wondered if JP will get the same ending; after playing it, I could see where he was coming from.
Anyway, I promised odds and ends in the title of this post, so here they are. Spoiler warnings for everything:
Videos
– I recorded a bunch over the last few weeks of Global, all of which reside in a playlist called ENDoALICE.
– These videos include JellicleCats’ final Colosseum battle, in which we sent Colo off in the most Jellicle fashion imaginable.
– The other long, notable video is of the entire Final Chapter, from loading up the game until… well, you’ll see.
– There are also videos detailing the results of that aforementioned final Colo match, my last banner pulls, and brief tours of my class and (then-active) Nightmare collections.
Additional Thoughts and Memories
– I mentioned bots in the first slideshow last time. What I forgot to mention anywhere in that post is that there were at least four bots who regularly appeared in the single-player/co-op areas, filling in CPU slots normally created by humans, and typically with stats more or less (or exactly) equal to your own. The four I remember seeing were Pinocchio (using Pinocchio/Cleric, iirc), s_white (who memorably used Alice/Breaker), Nepia (Red Riding Hood/Sorcerer), and peak (Snow White/Breaker; also, I can’t remember if they capitalized their name or not). When trying to befriend any of these four, you would get the standard message that would appear if this wasn’t possible due to a filled friend list.
– I also mentioned my favorite characters, but what I forgot to talk about is my least favorite, Aladdin. He was the first of two beefy adult bishies added to the game, the other being Hamelin, and has some appealing classes to match. However, his main personality aspect is “Nouveau Rich”, and he has a personality to match; with him, everything revolves around money, which he sincerely believes can solve any problem. In the guild Discord, I once described him as “a hedge fund tech bro in a fairy tale wrapper”.
– Speaking of Aladdin: in the third act, Act of Reality, each character arc ends with the real world version of said character dying. Some are suicides, others murders, others accidents, including drug overdoses. Real world Aladdin, a hot day trader, has the single dumbest death, caused by overdosing on caffeine.
– Last time I mentioned Lammy and special Valentine’s Day upgrade materials. This reminded me that on two other occasions, players could obtain special Lammy-themed materials: Clam Chowder and Lammy Noodle Soup. You can see what these items look like for yourself via the “Others” tab on this page. I never used either of these items, and, as it turned out, nor did some other players.
– Some of the tomes I used frequently as a Sorc main these past few years included: Book of Night, Voltage Dictionary, Conjuring Agreement, Everlife Phoenix Tome (Vicious), Gaze of Languor (the tome Infinity Weapon), Book of Temporal Wisdom, Book of Otherworldly Lights, The Pisces Codex, Writ of Annihilation, Dance Card of Misery (the unlock weapon for Little Mermaid/International), Reactor Core Book, and Book of the Waterfowl.
– The Shooting Gallery, as seen in the first slideshow, was later updated to match the current iteration in JP. This came with a feature of using all of your tickets at once—with the caveat that any equipment earned would be converted into upgrade materials. Whenever one of these updated Shooting Galleries was running, the in-game chat would see messages from confused players wondering what had happened to the equipment they had won.
There’s a lot more about this game that I could say, particularly if I thought about things a bit more, but I’ll wrap it up here. I’ve since continued on with JP, using DeachSword and Google Translate to read more of the story. Recently, I played through the only two Act of Reality stories Global didn’t get, and am pleased to report that Aladdin still has the dumbest death in that act. Last night, I dove into Act of Elimination Part Two, continuing on where Global left off, Final Chapter nothwithstanding.
Come January, I will miss SINoALICE a second time. I’m going to try and make the most of JP before then.